About Us
Our Story
In 1998 British safari guide Huw Jones was driving through a remote area in Eastern Zambia when he suddenly came upon a trail of blood on the dusty road. After following the trail for several miles, Huw caught up with a heavily pregnant woman slumped on a bicycle as her husband pedalled frantically in the relentless heat to get her to the nearest hospital, some 60km away. Despite Huw’s efforts, after such huge loss of blood, the woman and her unborn baby died in the jeep on the way; but the concept for the Virtual Doctor service, which would use the internet to save lives in rural Africa, was born. In 2016, Huw was recognised as an Everyday Tech Hero, an inspiring example of someone, who having experienced a challenge first-hand, has used technology to tackle it.
We use technology to connect health workers in isolated health centres, currently in rural Zambia and Malawi, with doctors, who support them with diagnosing patient symptoms.
The Virtual Doctors is registered as a charity in both the UK and Zambia. In addition, the Virtual Doctors USA has 501(c)(3) equivalent status as a fiscally sponsored project of the Edward Charles Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation.
3 Key Aims
- Help rural health workers to treat more patients in their own communities.
- Prevent unnecessary referrals to distant and hard to reach hospitals.
- 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.
