South African brothers create app to help fight Ebola

PALO ALTO WEEKLY by My Nguyen                      March 6, 2015
PALO ALTO, California -- 

...Malan and Philip Joubert, brothers from South Africa who recently moved to Palo Alto to expand their app-development company, Journey, saw the demand for mobile solutions, so they created the Ebola Care app to help aid organizations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. 

 The app has several core functions, including contact tracing, which identifies and diagnoses people who may have come into contact with an infected person; quarantine management, which tracks and manages the 21-day quarantine period of a patient; psychological assessments to determine the well-being of health workers; social work to build case files for orphaned children; survivor surveys, which are assessments of Ebola survivors upon leaving treatment centers; verification that supplies have been distributed; and event feedback, which captures thoughts from the community after educational events.

Malan said the app is designed to work well on low-end Android phones, which make up the vast bulk of smartphones in West Africa. If there is no wireless signal, the data is stored in a mobile relational database until there is, he said. Then the data is uploaded to the cloud where it can be accessed by approved agencies.

                                            Counselors receiving training for the Ebola Care app in Sierra Leone. Courtesy IsraAID

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