Empowering Developers to Build Next Generation, Mobile-First Healthcare Solutions
Richa Tiwari (Program Manager, Health AI, Google) & John Kimani (Developer Relations Ecosystem Program Manager, Google Kenya)
More than half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health services, primarily in under-resourced settings. In recent years, mobile-based solutions have emerged as a promising way to address these gaps in care. Built by a budding community of local healthcare innovators, these solutions have the potential to improve access to and quality of care. Furthermore, mobile health solutions have increasingly been seen as an essential element in easing the burden placed on health systems and bringing in greater efficiency.
To empower these developers to build next-generation, mobile-first healthcare solutions, Google launched a month-long Open Health Stack (OHS) developer workshop series in Kenya in partnership with Kabarak University, IntelliSOFT Consulting, and HealthIT. Workshop participants gained the skills and knowledge they need to build fast, reliable, and FHIR-compliant health solutions. Using OHS, a suite of open-source components that saves time and makes it easier to adopt modern healthcare standards, developers were encouraged to build health solutions that solve a critical need.
This program is a pilot aimed at building awareness and capabilities on digital health standards. Through a series of four webinars, three-day bootcamp and hackathon, the program introduced 180 participants to key concepts and tools required to build next-generation digital health apps. The program agenda included a presentation by the World Health Organization (WHO) on its recently developed SMART Guidelines, an introduction to OHS, and the opportunity to develop hands-on skills learning with FHIR-based solutions using OHS. For a final evaluation, participants presented to the organizers and received feedback on their demos on mobile-based healthcare apps and use cases developed based on the learnings from the overall program. These apps serve as a successful proof-of-concept and demonstrate the participants’ foundational understanding of FHIR-based solutions.
“I could tell this was a life-changing bootcamp. They rarely get a chance for someone to do a code walk-through. …It just blew them away.” — Dr Moses Thiga, senior lecturer at Kabarak University and lead coordinator of the program.
The community of innovators is critical to closing care coordination loops, and this program at Kabarak University is the first step towards introducing game-changing solutions that ease the burden on health systems, particularly in under-resourced settings. So what’s next? Based on this experience, we are planning future events to engage with local developer communities, with the goal of building awareness and capability for OHS in Africa and beyond.
If you’re interested in learning more about Open Health Stack or in hosting your own developer workshop, please send us an e-mail at [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear from you.
