Medic via your mobile

Photographer : Microsoft Office

Using a laptop, modem and mobile phones, FrontlineSMS: Medic has allowed community health workers to connect patients with hospital staff located 100 miles away, drastically improving health outcomes. If you’ve got a very tight budget and want to improve volunteer communication, you could pick up some very valuable tips from these guys!

Just using phones? But how?
FrontlineSMS is a free, open source software program that allows users to build a cheap, real time communication network using mobile phones. Basically, the program manages larger scale SMS networks by tracking text messages sent via mobiles to and from a central computer. Because the software is designed particularly for use in remote or developing areas, it doesn’t rely on an internet connection. That's the gist of it. For a more detailed explanation of how the software works, have a look at the video below.



FrontlineSMS: Medic have taken and adapted this software for medical ends to make it fit with their organisation.

Volunteer community health workers in developing countries are using the SMS network to provide better health care to remote patients, despite their very limited health care training and supplies.

Through the SMS network, they can instantly communicate with medical staff, allowing them to ask questions or provide patient updates. Field workers simply send a text message to the hospital computer and receive either an automated response where appropriate or a doctors personal directions. Here’s a few ways the organisation has started using the technology:

• Contacting mobile hospital units about emergencies
• Checking drug uses and correct dosages
• Individual instructions on treatment from a hospital physician.
• Tracking and updating patient’s health once they’ve been discharged
• Organising hospital activities, support groups and follow-up visits from hospital staff

So just how many lives is this thing saving?
By cutting down on the amount of time and money spent travelling to and from remote patients, hospitals can focus their resources on reaching more people in need and providing better care.

Here’s an example. During a six month pilot program at St Gabriel’s Hospital in Malawi, Frontline SMS substantially improved health outcomes for the area by:

• Doubling the number of people receiving treatment for Tuberculosis
• Improving the hospitals efficiency by saving around 2100 hours of work time
• Saving thousands in fuel costs
• The timely and accurate documentation of 2000 patient updates from remote areas in a central database
• Coordinating 130 doctor and nurse emergency visits to remote areas

Since the pilot programs inception, the FrontlineSMS: Medic network has grown in Malawi and now serves around 1.2 million patients. To hear about the impressive difference the programs made on the ground, take a look at this interview with one of the community health workers.



Because of these fast and effective results have seen the FrontlineSMS: Medic team have been inundated with requests from all over the globe to set up their program in countries facing similar issues around remote healthcare. At the moment, the program is rolling out in nine more countries and continues to grow every week.

A dollar a day
In order to raise funds and gather enough phones for community health workers, the campaign has started the Hope Phones campaign - a website that lets people donate their old phones to those who need them in Malawi and other parts of the world. The Hope Phones campaign collects some of the 500,000 phones discarded to landfill every day in the United States and sells them on to a recycling company. The proceeds of sales go towards buying appropriate, new phones for community health workers in Africa at just $10 a pop.

Because the FrontlineSMS software doesn’t require an internet connection to run, clinics only need to pay for SMS costs. At the moment, the pilot program is sending around 10 SMS’ a day, bringing the ongoing running cost to just over $1/day. With a program as cost effective as this, built on a free software application available online, just imagine what your organisation could do!