We will focus on examples of how mobile devices are bringing healthcare to underserved communities in rural Africa. How can we diagnose pneumonia with a $5 machine hooked up to a cell phone? How does a glowing pill bottle and a cellphone connection ensure that 85% of people take their HIV drugs in South Africa? And, what can the US learn about these experiments vis-a-vis privacy, rural access, and cost containment.
Douglas Naegele is President of Infield Health, where he leads product development and partnerships. At Infield, his team is passionate about improving patient health through mobile technology: SMS health challenges & social gaming, benefit eligibility checks via text message, and automated patient notifications based on medical procedures. His prior experience includes drug invention, healthcare finance, and technology partnership development. He's also ridden the local train through Siberia, the local bus through South America, and a local yak in the Himalaya.
Jaspal Sandhu uses and studies design to drive public health innovation. He manages the health portfolio at the Gobee Group where he undertakes various projects at the intersection of technology and global health, including mHealth. He has worked in multiple ways to support mHealth in Africa, including engagements with the World Bank, Intel, and Microsoft. In addition to this African experience, he conducted dissertation research as a Fulbright scholar in Mongolia into the role of mobile technologies in supporting rural health services. He is a Lecturer of Community Health and Human Development in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he teaches a globally-unique, multidisciplinary, graduate-level course of his own design called "Designing Innovative Public Health Solutions", focused on systematic approaches to innovation. He holds his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and his MS and BS from MIT.
Josh Nesbit is the Executive Director of Medic Mobile, a nonprofit organization using low-cost, mobile technology to create connected, coordinated health systems that save more lives. As an international health and bioethics student at Stanford, his qualitative research focused on access to pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment. Josh has implemented text message networks in Malawi, Uganda, and Cameroon, advising ICT development projects in more than 15 countries. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, he helped coordinate the 4636 project, an SMS-based emergency response system. He is a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, Rainer Arnhold Fellow, Strauss Scholar, and Haas Public Service Fellow. Recently, Josh was named by Devex as one of 40 Under 40 Leaders in International Development, and received the Truman Award for Innovation from the Society for International Development. Josh also serves on the Board of Directors of IntraHealth International.
Dr. Patricia Mechael is the Director of Strategic Application of Mobile Technology for Public Health and Development at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. She has been actively involved in the field of International Health for 15 years with field experience in over 30 countries primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. She has a Masters in International Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene (1998) and a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2006), where she specifically examined the role of mobile phones in relation to health in Egypt. For the past ten years, Dr. Mechael has published and spoken extensively on the strategic role of mobile telephony and relevant software applications within an ecosystem of eHealth, public health, and telecommunications actors in low and middle income countries.
