Community care givers receive their Nompilo-enabled phones at the training workshop. Pictures courtsey of Geomed.

GeoMed is described as a pioneer of mobile health applications and integrated solutions. Their work revolves around the development and supply of patient-centered solutions to meet clinical demands. JP de Vos, founder and director of GeoMed, explained that GeoMed was built on over five years of experience in consulting and product development in the health informatics field: “As you develop a better understanding of the needs of citizens and care providers (and the shortcomings of the existing systems) you realise that there are a lot of simple solutions out there that can make a big difference in their respective lives.”

One such project is GeoMed’s Tshwane e-Health Living Lab (TeLL), which brings health service and solutions providers together with health care clinics, health providers and related stakeholders, in order to drive innovation in the health sector.

The project was born out of GeoMed’s involvement in stakeholder-related community events in the health informatics field, “We had been approached by the Innovation Hub to attend one or two workshops where different stakeholders representing the Department. of Health and Social Development were present. During these workshops we’ve been able to identify several problems that can be resolved through the use of cost effective and easy-to-use e-Health and/or m-Health services,” said de Vos.

Based on its success in Finland and other European countries, the Living Lab model was used for the project as a way to provide a testing ground for issues such as usability, interoperability, cost efficiency and effectiveness; as de Vos explained, “The focus of the Living Lab (for us) was to provide a test bed to validate the business case and cost models for both the provider and the receiver of the service being tested.”

Assisting Community Care Givers through mobile technology

A successful project that was run through the TeLL in Northern Tshwane was Nompilo, which aims to help reduce operational inefficiencies and deliver cost-savings and enable health and social care workers to enhance their work as Community Care Givers (CCGs). In South Africa there are over 75,000 CCGs operating at grassroots level, who are the heart of the National Healthcare system. They currently use a Monitoring and Evaluation system that is paper-based, these reports are then provided to the local NPO on a monthly basis, which are then aggregated and provided to the relevant Health Department. (more…)