Mobile Doctor Nigeria

Project

MobileDoc is a Symbian mobile application, developed by Andreas Jakl and Gerald Madlmayr and released as freeware in 2009, that helps injured people in emerging markets quickly find nearby hospitals or traditional medicine men. The idea grew out of a trip to Nigeria, where the developers found modern mobile phones increasingly common even though hospitals were scarce, expensive and poorly equipped, leading many people to rely instead on medicine men who treat using natural remedies, against a backdrop of rising traffic accidents linked to poor roads, risky driving and the spread of motorcycles. MobileDoc has two parts: a DocMaster client that lets medicine men and hospitals register the conditions and injuries they can treat and broadcast their location to a central server, and a simple, graphics-based end-user client that lets an injured person select the type of injury in just two touches and see the nearest appropriate help on a map, designed to work even for users who cannot read.