What we do
3 Key Aims
1. Help rural health workers to treat more patients in their own communities.
2. Prevent unnecessary referrals to distant and hard to reach hospitals.
3. Improve the knowledge & capacity of rural health workers so that next time a complex patient case presents, they know how to deal with it.
Our highly accessible and user-friendly software, in the form of an App loaded onto a Smartphone, links Clinical Officers and Senior Nurses in rural clinics to volunteer doctors. We provide training from the outset as well as sustained medical and technical support, education and feedback.
We believe this model could be adopted across Africa, and elsewhere, making a significant impact on healthcare outcomes. Survey results show that using the Virtual Doctors service:
Improved a patient’s symptoms in 92% of cases
Prevented the need for a hospital referral in 78% of cases
Provided an educational benefit in 97% of cases
To date we have equipped healthcare workers in more than 270 health facilities with app-loaded smartphones.
These facilities serve as many as 2.5 million people with no direct access to a qualified doctor.
More clinics are being set up in a rolling expansion programme funded entirely through the generosity of our supporters.
We have also equipped a further 6 rural Health Centres in Malawi as part of a pilot scheme, at the Invitation of the Ministry of Health.
