We just heard a fantastic talk by Jacqui Maher about her work on the Boabab project, fighting AIDS in Malawi, Africa.

First, she gave us an overview of the AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa:

  • Africa has 12% of the world’s population, but 60% of the people with AIDs
  • In Malawi
    • 14% of adults have AIDS
    • 8 people die every hour from aids
    • there are 280 doctors
    • 3500 HIV/AIDS patients per doctor

When she arrived, patients would wait in long lines to see a doctor and patient intake would typically take 15 minutes.  It was all paper-based an error-prone.  In Malawi, they have a national id program where every ID card has a bar code.  This could be used for easy patient intake.  After they developed the hardware/software solution, it would take less than 1 minute to register new patients and less than 10 seconds for returning patients to get through the intake process.

The solution was designed to help  in a number of areas:

  • Patient Registration: entering new patient data, generate national id bar code, or scan an existing one
  • Encounters: any patient interaction
  • Observations: diagnosis, progression, vitals, patients complaints, drug regimen
  • Prescriptions: drugs, ingredients, inventory, etc.

They overcame challenges with spotty internet connections and low bandwidth.  They use a wireless mesh network, which is self-healing.  The portable computer they used was based on the I-Opener (initially bought from the US on eBay, then 2000 were donated) which was hacked to include a touchscreen, ethernet, PoE (power over ethernet) and a bar code scanner.  The software is Ubunto, Ruby on Rails, and MySQL.

More details on the software:

  • BART – Baobab Anti-Retroviral Treatment
  • OpenMRS Data model
  • templating using ERB
  • App calls via AJAX
  • Rspec tests

Jacqui told a great story about Gem the Janitor (yes, that is his real name) who just picked up the device during a busy time when all of the nurses were busy, figured out the interface quickly and started helping register people.  Now he runs the whole intake process.

Why RoR?

  • great community
  • common consensus on best practices
  • active contributions to OSS
  • very accessible information on every part of the stack
  • supurb interactive tutorials like peepcode
  • Ruby is easier to learn offline that other languages, comes with documentation
  • ActiveRecord: makes complex data models easier

Now 265 of the 280 doctors are using this app.  The data collection enables extensive reporting, enables agencies to use the data to focus research & funding, and influence policy decisions.

You can help!

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