Why we chose Josh as a Fellow

As a Human Biology student at Stanford, Josh left his books behind and went to Malawi to conduct HIV/AIDS research at a private hospital. After learning how far patients and community health workers had to travel to reach the hospital – and noticing that he had great cell phone coverage in most villages – Josh set out to connect health workers using mobile phones.

As health workers travel from clinics to reach isolated patients, they are often just as disconnected from central clinics as the patients they are trying to serve. Now that mobile phones are cheap, it's possible to use simple, open-source communication technologies to connect people and streamline operations. Medic Mobile develops and applies technologies that coordinate community health workers, support community mobilization for vaccination and satellite clinics, and facilitate supply chain management, referrals, routine data collection, and mapping of health services.