Why we chose Eric as a Fellow

Eric is a design engineer from San Francisco, committed to bringing together health and mobile technology in Africa. As a skilled bioengineer, Eric started a medical device company that produced a rugged, low-cost oximeter, and after an experience with the healthcare system in Ghana, realized that he could bring his two worlds together to improve health system communication.

With the ubiquity of cell phones, all kinds of new interventions possible. Switchboard collects the mobile phone numbers of all of the healthcare providers in Tanzania, creating a system that allows providers to talk to each other, to push information out, and gather information back. This created an unprecented system to coordinate and refine the health care system.