developing countries hardware history open source presentation ruby on rails touchscreen volunteer Mike McKay recently took Baobab on the road, after being invited to speak at RailsConf Europe. He went and told the Ruby on Rails world about how rails is helping to fight HIV in Africa. He brought to life the HIV epidemic and showed how healthcare workers are being guided through treatment protocols and getting decision support from the data in realtime. Check out the slides from “Africa On Rails” for more information.
September 28th, 2007
developing countries history projects History
Baobab Health Partnership was founded by Gerry Douglas and Dr. Thuy Bui in late 2000 as a direct result of their work with the health care system in Malawi between 1995 and 1997. Baobab’s first project was the development of a touchscreen-based patient management information system in the paediatric department of Lilongwe’s main hospital. The goal was to provide “proof of concept� for the use of appropriately engineered information technology by clinicians to improve the completeness and accuracy of data routinely collected for national level planning.
The concept was proved, and subsequent projects included modules for other hospital departments as well as highly specialized systems for VCT and HIV treatment. Over the course of the past six years, the hardware and software has been continually improved and a host of other technologies have been added to the Baobab toolkit.
Most recently the Baobab real time patient management system has been demonstrated at various international conferences (like PEPFAR, ART-LINC). Interest levels have been high, particularly due to the ease at which data is captured, and there are now a number of requests for similar systems to be deployed in other developing countries.
August 29th, 2006
