Isaac Holeman and Josh Nesbit

2010

Isaac Holeman and Josh Nesbit

FrontlineSMS:Medic

http://medic.frontlinesms.com

Health

The Bold Idea:

Bold Idea: Empower health workers in poor countries to communicate, coordinate patient care, and provide diagnostics using low-cost mobile technology.
 
Nearly 289 million people are afflicted by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria annually, and the developing world lacks 4.4 million health workers needed to address these burdens. One common response to this shortage is to train community health workers (CHWs) to bridge gaps between central clinics and peripheral villages. When community members fall critically ill, a 40 mile walk is commonly the only means of alerting professionals. A lack of communication infrastructure results in inefficiencies that waste precious resources and reduce the quality of care. 

FrontlineSMS:Medic’s mission is to help health workers communicate, coordinate patient care, and provide diagnostics using low-cost mobile technology. Their software allows clinics to organize text messages and mobile forms by patient, symptom, or health worker. They are adding auto-categorization and mapping capabilities, integrating with a comprehensive medical records system, and plan to use a multimedia messaging module to allow diagnosis of malaria, tuberculosis, or HIV using a mobile device.

Biography:

Josh Nesbit studied international health and bioethics at Stanford University, where his honors thesis focused on barriers to pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment. He is a Pop!Tech and Rainer Arnhold Fellow, and has implemented FrontlineSMS:Medic projects around the world. As an undergraduate, Isaac Holeman conducted an ethnographic study at a clinic in Cuba. He later studied access to health services among Oregon's homeless and migrant populations. Isaac has led FrontlineSMS:Medic’s field operations from Malawi for six months.

Isaac Holman

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?                                                                                             You could say the first step in our partnership was when I commented on one of Josh's blog posts - we met online and got to know each other via our blogs and twitter. We were still in college, trying to write honors theses and each managing our own precursor projects that later merged to become FrontlineSMS:Medic. In all the rush I don't actually remember when I committed to working with Josh. I do remember realizing that he, like myself, had committed his whole self to the bigger project of social justice long before he ever began working with mobile phones. That was when I decided he'd be a good guy to work with.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social and difficult problems? (Such as experiences, skills, events, etc.)                                                                                                        When I was three my family adopted my brother, who was four at the time. We were the same year in school, same sports, same friends. We grew up side by side and have a lot of the same values. At the same time, we are very different from each other. My family's story is too big to fit behind a simple picket fence, and I suppose my thinking has never been fenced in by convention either.

New and Untested: What's innovative about your new idea for social change?                                                                                                             Refer to Josh's

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?                                                                    Listen deeply, read deeply, think deeply, speak passionately. You really need to understand how you commune with the moral universe, and use it to keep yourself fresh and enthusiastic about your challenges.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?          Keep me going: K OS  Inspired: Attended evensong by the Kings College Choir at Cambridge yesterday. I'd forget what color my eyes are before I'd forget that performance.

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work and anything in between)? The Name of the Wind (for pleasure)  Almost any ethnographic writing by Philippe Bourgois (for work)

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?                       twitter.com (work)  The Oregonian (local news, for pleasure)

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?

There's no room for ego in this world or “when we look at modern man we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to its scientific and technological abundance. We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the sea like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the earth like brothers and sisters.” - Martin Luther King Junior

Josh Nesbit

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?                                                                                                  I was inspired to act during the summer of 2007, working at a rural Malawian hospital that serves 250,000 patients spread 100 miles in every direction. To reach remote patients, the  hospital trained volunteer community health workers like Dickson Mtanga, a subsistence farmer. Dickson had to walk 35 miles to submit hand-written reports on 25 HIV-positive patients in his community. The hospital needed a simple means of communication, and in the summer of 2008 Josh returned to the hospital with mobile phones to provide it.    In six months, the SMS program at St. Gabriel’s Hospital saved the clinical staff 1200  hours of follow-up time and $3,500 in motorbike fuel. Over 100 patients started TB treatment after their symptoms were noticed by CHWs and reported by text-message. The SMS network saved 21 antiretroviral therapy (ART) monitors 900 hours of travel time over six months, and brought the Home-Based Care team to the homes of 130 patients who would not have otherwise received care. After this pilot, there was no turning back.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social and difficult problems? (Such as experiences, skills, events, etc.)                                                                                                        My father taught me to dream big, and my mother taught me to care for people. In today's 'flat' world, it's possible to do both.     Certain events reinforce the need to act swiftly and at scale. For example, FrontlineSMS:Medic helped coordinate The 4636 Project, an effort to create an emergency communications channel after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Working with the Office of Innovation at the US Department of State, technology providers and Haitian mobile operators, a system was created to process text messages expressing needs from the ground. Using crowdsourced translation, categorization, and geo-tagging, reports were created for first responders  within 10 minutes of receiving an SMS. Over 70,000 messages were received in the first month of  operation, focusing relief efforts for thousands of Haitians.

New and Untested: What's innovative about your new idea for social change?                                                                                         FrontlineSMS:Medic’s mission is to help health workers communicate, coordinate patient care, and provide diagnostics using low-cost mobile technology. We believe that mobile telephony has untapped potential to facilitate healthcare over distance. Our software allows clinics to organize text messages and mobile forms by patient, symptom, or health worker. We are adding auto-categorization and mapping capabilities, integrating with a comprehensive medical records system, and plan to use a multimedia messaging module to allow diagnosis of malaria, STDs and tuberculosis using a mobile device.

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?                                                                 Passion, tenacity and ambition are useful qualities, but empathy and humility are the glue. The most successful social entrepreneurs I've met are flexible and resilient, refueled by social impact.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired? RatatatLupe Fiasco  Alexi Murdoch  Kid Cudi

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work and anything in between)?

Utilitarianism - John Stuart Mill  Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely  Watership Down - Richard Adams

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?                      Gmail, Twitter, Yammer, Digg, Pandora, NPR, NY Times

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
"You are part of a relentless, positive storm."    - My father    "Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."    - Albert Einstein