Digital health possibilities at the last mile of healthcare delivery are not limited anymore to data collection and management tools aimed at single community healthcare workers. Nowadays, it is possible to support the work of entire clinical teams, allowing them to manage patient records even in the most constraining and challenging settings, such as:
- Very low resources health facilities (with little to no ICT infrastructure, unreliable electricity, unreliable to no Internet access);
- Mobile clinics (community visits led by healthcare teams, transient socio-medical activities);
- Humanitarian relief operations (refugee camps, disaster zones, war zones).
We are bridging the digital divide by introducing Mekom Portable: the sturdy hand case that can host and run entire health information systems wherever it goes. Our entry version of Mekom Portable has been originally designed for Care 2 Communities’ Haitian health outposts that are hard to reach and completely disconnected from the Internet.
Mekom Portable is intentionally “DIY” thereby allowing anyone to undertake maintenance tasks with minimum guidance (provided beforehand or over the phone). It accommodates situations where sourcing electronic parts is challenging by embedding common, off-the-shelf, devices that can be ordered easily.
At its core lies a cluster of Raspberry Pis, the popular low-cost micro-computer, that provides all the RAM and CPU required to run complex health information systems like Ozone or Bahmni, even when integrated with analytics tools or population reporting platforms like DHIS2.
One of the most striking features of Mekom Portable is its ability to support offline maintenance and monitoring through secured USB auto-runners. This plug-and-play feature makes it possible to upload to or download from Mekom Portable simply by inserting encrypted USB drives that our technicians provide. Software upgrades and data backups are then made asynchronously when there is no possibility to connect to the case directly over the Internet or through a WAN.
With Mekom Portable it is possible today to run a complete hospital management information system anywhere, by bringing health ICT infrastructure where there was none.
Our mission is to provide digital health solutions anywhere, and Mekom Portable doest just that.