Open Source Tackles Healthcare In Places Microsoft Can’t

“At one hospital in Kano, Nigeria, 50 babies are born each day.
And it’s not exactly prepared to handle them all. “We’re talking
about one midwife taking three deliveries at a time,” says Evelyn
Castle.

“Nonetheless, Castle aims to create digital records of those
births and the hundreds of others happening across northern Nigeria
each day — even as she and another American ex-patriot, Adam
Thompson, are working to digitize the health records of adults
across the region, including polio cases and expectant mothers
who’ve tested HIV positive. It’s an enormous task, but the size is
only part of the problem. Castle and Thompson are introducing
western technology to facilities that aren’t familiar with it
— and may not have the resources to handle what they are
familiar with.

“‘This is one of the most difficult places on the planet —
in many ways,’ says Andrew Karlyn, who spent three years as the
country director in Nigeria for the Population Council, a nonprofit
that seeks to improve living conditions in places across the globe.
‘If you’ve got a barely literate medical technician, who only knows
how to use a microscope to look for Malaria and fill in a form, you
can’t just put a fancy computer in front of him and expect him to
use it.'”

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