It is with great pleasure and excitement that I announce the formal recognition by Apple of the Health eVillages program, featuring our Skyscape app!  Over the last few months film crews from Apple have traveled to both our office in NYC, and one of our pilot sites in Lwala, Kenya, to capture their products being used by Health eVillages users to effect positive change in the world.

We welcome you to take a moment and watch the full video they have created, on Apple’s website here.

Apple products have proven to be a wonderful tool to bring Health eVillages content to our end users around the world.  We currently have Apple products deployed at all of our pilot sites and have found the intuitive nature of the operating system helps to accelerate training.  The more healthcare providers we can train, and train well, the greater our impact is and the more lives we can save.

This is, indeed, a very proud moment for Health eVillages and our supporters. Thank you.

Donato Tramuto
Founder and Chairman
Health eVillages

To launch the HERO program, we met with our two coordinators at Regis College– Dr. Jan Tuxbury, a Regis College Professor, and Manoucheka Esteve, a Haitian nurse who works at a health center in Hinche, Haiti. It was there that she received her new Health eVillages iPad loaded with a comprehensive mix of French, Creole, and English language medical reference material.  She learned to use the device and software immediately, and we watched with smiles as we saw that look she had on her face – the look of a new Health eVillages user who, for the first time, realizes the breadth of reference materials available.

The Hinche health center is run by Partners In Health and the Haitian Ministry of Health. We could not be more excited to be working with them!  For over 25 years, Partners In Health has been delivering high-quality healthcare in Haiti.

Through the HERO program, Manoucheka will lead health education at Hinche.  She will teach classes for healthcare providers using topics from her Health eVillages device and show French language medical videos on her iPad to educate providers and patients.  In addition to this, Manoucheka will be working with Dr. Tuxbury to bring four Regis College nursing educators to Hinche twice a year to teach and help treat patients.  These nurse educators will each be armed with their own Health eVillages devices.

Big thanks to Physicians Interactive and Medical Aid Films for providing the content suite backbone. This is the first time Health eVillages has released Medical Aid Films in French.  A big thank you also goes to Partners In Health and Regis College.  Manoucheka will return home tomorrow to begin a 3-4 month nurse educator training program administered by Partners In Health.  We at Health eVillages are excited about the future of the HERO program!

“As I am writing this note, a big orange ball is lowering itself over the plains of the Great Rift Valley, and I search for but cannot find evidence of one light bulb as the shades of darkness cover the Massai huts in the distance. We were busy today in our nine operating rooms, caring for women who have had complications from birth while they were in Somalia. We had a small boy from Madagascar who had a brain defect called encephalocele (big words make doctors “sound” smart) and a man who had tuberculosis of the spine, and they all needed good anesthesia care. We have committed ourselves to improve the care of surgical patients in Sub-Sahara Africa, and each graduate from the anesthesia program will save lives for years. We have projected that each anesthesia graduate will save 14,600 lives if they work for ten years and do only two cesarean sections per day, which is a very low estimate. This will be over 7,300 mothers and 7,300 children who have their lives saved due to this training program in Africa. And each of you are involved in this life-changing program.

We have been training in Kenya for almost 15 years, and with my travels into the conflict countries of Southern Sudan and Somalia and not being able to forget the faces of patients left without care, we have started an anesthesia program for these two countries as well. This weekend, 14 women and one young man came to learn anesthesia for non-physicians from Southern Sudan and a partnership with the Governments of Southern Sudan and Kenya along with the World Bank, logistics, and some friends of mine who have funded the project. These people have never had a medical book, but a few of them have a laptop. A doctor studying anesthesia in Tanzania attended. He is in his last six months of training, as a specialist, and after visiting our hospital and hearing a lecture, he told me that in three years he had never been to a real lecture. He had been told to go and learn on his own without any supervision. In addition, I have sent two of my African graduates into Somalia — funded via a grant — to start the first anesthesia program in Somaliland with a strong female leader. In the book “Half the Sky”, Edna Aden is discussed in one chapter as an example of a person who has changed her world. We have been working with her for many years to improve healthcare in Somaliland and now have a non-physician training program in her hospital in Hargeisa.

All of these different levels of training in Africa impact lives each day, and the iPods, iPads and tablets are changing the manner in which we can educate. My desire would be that we speed up so we can have a greater, far-reaching educational focus in the lives of trainees in Africa. With the proper tools, these young people can change their own countries without the hurdles of improper aid and interference from those who will never understand their culture and specific issues for development. We can use technology, which has become so common in western countries, in a manner that is empowering so those who were raised in huts without even a light bulb can now use a basic device to save a mother’s life through education.

Thank you for your work in this effort. I could write a story or two per day describing how books and lectures can help spread the educational cloud as I spread myself thin across this mass of students who desire and deserve excellent medical education. You are making a difference in this land. I looked again now that the sun is totally down and can only see the lights of a few trucks moving down a narrow road in the Valley floor. This continent needs our help, and we are losing ground every day and night.

Thanks again,

Mark”

Angels of Hope Uganda – Our friends in Uganda are using their Health eVillages devices for a wide variety of things.  When Nurse Anet, Head Nurse at Angels of Hope, isn’t using the Skyscape drug guide to determine the appropriate medicines to buy, she is showing a classroom of new mothers proper infant nutrition videos from Medical Aid Films.   Dr. Ivan, Lead Physician at Angels of Hope, has used his device all over the country, bringing medical references to areas so remote, it would be impractical to carry books.   Dr. Odeke, who works up in Acuma, our most rural clinic, used the symptom checker to diagnose an HIV/AIDS patient with Lupus.  It was a disease he hadn’t even considered, and the knowledge he gained from the Health eVillages mobile device saved the man’s life!

Kijabe Kenya – The Health eVillages anesthesiologists at Kijabe hospital saw over 11,000 patients in surgery this year!  They were helped every step of the way by the anesthesiology reference material from Skyscape on their devices.  Nurse Anesthetist Papytcho Ntambwe has returned from Kijabe to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with his Health eVillages device and has become one of only a few anesthetists serving the southern DRC.  Dr. Mark Newton, Head of Anesthesiology at Kijabe Hospital, brought his device to Somalia in December where he used it to help treat patients in one of the harshest environments in the world.  Most recently, Health eVillages partnered with content partner Oakstone Publishing and hardware partner Magnus Gyan to bring Kijabe a tablet loaded with continuing medical education material to supplement medical instruction.

Shanghai, China – Shanghai Children’s Hospital, where our Chinese users are located, saw over 1 million patients in 2012!  All of our users there work in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and have been using the devices to do background research on pediatric diseases.  They have found the Health eVillages dosing calculators especially useful.  We can’t wait for the new round of residents to arrive this year and work with them to bring the Health eVillages mobile devices out into their smaller cities!

Haiti – Our Haitian Health eVillages users returned to the states during the summer of 2012 to continue their education at Regis College and spent some time re-training with our team!  We were able to answer questions the nurses had on the software and update their devices with a number of new French language medical apps.  The nurses, all having different levels of English competency, were using the devices different amounts.  Some, who lived in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, were using the devices every day while others from more rural areas really needed the French language apps to increase their comfort level with the devices.  One of the nurses was using her device so much to teach medical students that she crafted a homemade armband so she could carry her devices around while she was teaching!

Lwala Kenya:  A thriving, rural hospital, The Lwala Community Alliance (LCA) was one of the most amazing pilot sites in 2012.  The year began with the life-saving story of Nurse Okari, who used the Skyscape reference guides to research neonatal resuscitation and saved a baby’s life.  As 2012 progressed, the Health eVillages material was incorporated into bi-monthly continuing medical education classes run by the administration and often by the co-founders of LCA – brothers Fred and Milton O’Chieng.  Nurse Okari has recently begun bringing his device out into the surrounding community to provide in-house education using images and videos from Health eVillages.  He works to leverage this educational material to convince sick individuals that they need medical attention at the health center.  We are currently working to arm traveling nurses from Vanderbilt University with the Skyscape software as they travel to Lwala to help them maximize their impact while they are on the ground.

As I write this, we are beginning to develop the plans for our newest pilot in rural Louisiana!  There will be more to come on this front soon, so check back in soon for more exciting news from Health eVillages!

Young children walks miles in Kenya to receive healthcare, food, and clean water.

Since returning, I have heard from many of those who were a part of the Health eVillages training last month about how much the mobile health technology has made a difference to their communities and patients.

I know I will never forget the dedication and compassion of the healthcare practitioners I met along the way. Nurse Mary, Sister Rose, Nurse Anet, Joseph, Okari — countless people who, day-in and day-out, work tirelessly to help others.  They work in the harshest of conditions, yet they fight with a passion to do the best they can with what they have for their patients.  They give their communities hope and inspire others to join with them to help their neighbors.

Joseph is our sponsor for Angels of Hope, Acuma and a brave father of eight.  Joseph fled his village with his children during the invasion of the Lord’s Resistance Army and Warlord Kony.  He hid them in a closet in Kampala until it was safe to return home.  Joseph also fought in the Lord’s Resistance Army for the safety and freedom of the people of Uganda, a hero among men.

Nurse Anet is the matriarch of the Angels of Hope Mattuga clinic.  With responsibilities far beyond her years Anet spends her days overseeing the health and well being of countless Ugandans, from the young orphans of the village to the elderly who take care of them.  The lives of so many depend on her daily labor and she is there for them everyday without fail.

With the help of Health eVillages mobile health technology, communities can start to compensate for lack of electricity and resources.

Sister Rose is one of the head nurses at the Lwala Community Alliance in Western Kenya.  Her undying commitment to the hospital is apparent from the moment you meet Rose.  There is no doubt that she would give herself for it, and does.  In a world where technology is becoming more the norm.  a woman with Roses grounding in tradition could feel behind, left out.  During our training however, Rose showed me this need not always be the case.  Her love for her patients and strength of will shown through in her determination to learn the Health eVillages devices, she knew they would help.  The day I was leaving she walked past me, stopped and said “we will learn, slowly, but we will learn”.

Then there is Nurse Mary, working tirelessly at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya.  Mary is a leader at the large hospital and her responsibilities are endless.  I met her at 8 AM my first morning there.  We worked all day with her staff, training on our devices well into the evening.  I left around 7 PM tired and ready for dinner and bed.  The next morning, I ventured back up to the hospital, where Mary was sitting at a table in the break room studying with one of our devices.  She was finishing her shift and she had not slept; they had patients to attend to all night and she had only now found time to sit.  These are the folks we long to help.

It is so easy to come home from these trips abroad and fall back in to our daily routines.  What is important is to never forget the people, the communities behind the cause. There are countless charities around the world,  working tirelessly, day after day, to improve the lot of their people.

Health eVillages is tremendously honored to work with such committed people, and I believe the mobile health technology they now have will help provide better care for those who need it most for years to come.

The Incubation Room at Kijabe Hospital, Kenya

We spent today training at Kijabe Hospital here outside of Nairobi, Kenya!  What a wonderful team of health care providers this hospital has, all so very dedicated to the work that they do.  Kijabe Hospital is a wonderful standard for what health care facilities in Africa can be.  It is a welcoming place, friendly and most importantly, clean!  This hospital however, just like every other facility we have seen on this Health eVillages trip, suffers from a serious lack of medical reference material.

A good deal of what we have seen here; from the equipment, to the medications and the books, has been donated by either generous people within Kenya or, more often than not, from the United States.  Kijabe Hospital is a teaching hospital and if they are not able to receive enough donations, students are sometimes left without medical books.  The level of care/teaching here is high and it was exciting for us to see the excitement from students as they begin to understand the wealth of medical knowledge that is now at their fingertips with the Skyscape apps on the devices.

Dr. Mark Newton is our Pilot contact here in Kijabe.  Truly a wonderful man, he has spent the last thirteen years of his life dedicated to teaching and practicing anesthesiology here in Kenya.  Originally from the United States, Dr. Newton has brought up his family here, made a life here, because he believes in changing the world for better.  Many of the pieces of donated equipment here at Kijabe Hospital were brought over by him and his colleagues, some of them he has convinced to stay and work for years at a time!

Our last training today was for two of Dr. Newton’s recent anesthesiology graduates.  Grace is from Mombasa, a coastal Kenya city.  Papytcho is from South Eastern Congo.  Both trained with Dr. Newton here in Kijabe and returned here to train on the Health eVillages devices and will return home with devices to be used in their cities.  We are so excited to begin to hear feedback from them!

This has been an amazing trip, where we have been fortunate to meet many health care providers.  These folks are truly helping their people every day, they are changing the world.  It has been amazing to be able to be a small piece of what they do.  We look forward to continuing our connection with these incredible individuals, and will use their feedback to make the Health eVillages program even stronger!  More to come!

-Matt

Kijabe Hospital in Kenya

Our last stop on this Health eVillages Africa trip for January 2012, Kijabe Hospital is by far the largest institution we have visited. We have spent the last couple of days traveling from Lwala, Kenya through Kisumu and Nairobi to Kijabe. Kijabe Hospital sits just two hours outside of Nairobi in a beautiful town up in the clouds. The hospital has stood for 75 years and functions as a source for clean, consistent healthcare in an area where this is truly hard to find.

While modern and well-equipped in comparison to neighboring clinics, there is still a grave lack of medical reference material and healthcare technology tools. A good deal of the teaching hospital’s resources are donated by generous people. However, professors and medical students there do not even have access to modern textbooks. Health eVillages has started to address this problem by focusing on requested anesthesiology materials for the hospital.

While I was working with the medical students and staff at Kijabe Hospital, I was told about a man who arrived at the hospital the day before with complications from prostate cancer who could not be saved. During our training, another man arrived at the hospital with similar complications. The staff quickly put the Health eVillages devices to use, searching for treatment protocols that might save the second man from the same fate.

Dr. Mark Newton is our contact here, he is the head of anesthesiology at Kijabe and has lived here for the past thirteen years with his wonderful family. He returns tomorrow night, as presently he is in Southern Sudan meeting with medical officials on the future of their healthcare system. I look forward to hearing of his travels and finding out more about the hospital he has helped to grow during the last decade.

Matt trains Anesthesiology nursing team in the Kijabe Hospital

I felt proud that Health eVillages was able to help these dedicated clinicians to at least give this second man a fighting chance. We all know that technology can’t save everyone. It was remarkable to see how Kijabe Hospital embraced this new technology in hopes that every patient could be given a fighting chance.

The sun sets off in the distance over the local volcano (inactive!) as I sit and write this post. The beautiful flowers of Kenya blossom around me and I am left with a feeling of promise with where we have been so far and excitment with where we are to go.

-Matt

It is a pleasure to be here. I feel like a link between the wonderful people at Health eVillages, Skyscape and Physicians Interactive, and these folks, who are everyday working with very little to change the lives of those they serve.

Yesterday, we trained Okari, a nurse practitioner, on the Skyscape software.  During the training, we ask trainees to search for a topic of their choice. Just the day before,  the clinic had admitted Katherine, a patient whose unborn child was at risk for prenatal asphyxia. Apnea in premature births is when a baby’s breathing slows down or stops in short episodes. Okari searched for “neonatal resuscitation” and refreshed his memory with the procedure within the Skyscape software.  He watched the video provided by our partners at MedicalAid Films on neonatal resuscitation. He later explained to me that even though they learn this in nursing school, they don’t perform it all the time and so the review was essential.

Last night, Okari came in early for his shift to check on Katherine.  He was just in time to help deliver her baby, but as he had feared, the baby was not breathing.  Thankfully, Okari had prepared the day before using the Health eVillages software.  Thanks to the devices, his mind was fresh with the knowledge needed for newborn resuscitation. Okari provided the proper medical care and saved the baby’s life!  Katherine left today with a healthy baby boy.

Early the next morning, Okari came to us and asked if he could borrow one of the devices (we still held them as training was ongoing). He gathered all the medical staff in the birthing room and used the Skyscape software along with the Medical Aid Films video to offer a presentation on neonatal resuscitation. He was able to refresh everyone’s memory and easily establish a consistent level of knowledge and in turn care.

It is amazing to be here.

-          Matt

 Day 9 from Kenya, with Heatlh eVillages from Matthew Linder.

- Matt

An Angels of Hope clinic in Acuma, Uganda

What an exciting day here for Health eVillages in Central Uganda!

We had a wonderful training session here today with a group of health care providers who have had very little exposure to mobile technology!  Not only did they catch on quickly to the Skyscape software, they were able to truly grasp the power of the tool and the knowledge at their fingertips.

Here in a clinic with only two medical books, both from the 1970′s, the ability to access up-to-date medical information with Health eVillages will surely save lives.

Matt trains Dr. Odeke, Lead Physician at the Angeles of Hope clinic

The second challenge here after the inexperience with technology was the lack of any electrical power whatsoever.  There is no such thing as an electrical outlet, a challenge that could have rendered the devices all but useless.

Thanks to solar power, we were able to overcome this challenge!  Using a small solar device we brought, we charged the devices during the day allowing for uninterrupted usage with patients and superior medical care!

Matt and Dr. Odeke continue to train tirelessly through the dark night, despite the lack of electricity.

Tomorrow it’s back to the capital city to regroup and prepare for the second leg of the journey, Kenya!

- Matt