War, Tech and Health: How medicine under fire prompted an app to improve care

Dr. Mohamad Dalwai provides a medical consultation to one of the 800-1000 migrants and refugees who are living amongst boats on an abandoned military base on the outskirts of Tripoli. Many have been there for the duration of the conflict, been robbed of all identity papers, money and live in constant fear, without access to healthcare or security. MSF has provided medical consultations and assistance to the community, and are calling for their protection.
Dr. Mohamad Dalwai consults with one of the refugee living living amongst boats on an abandoned military base on the outskirts of Tripoli. Many have been there for the duration of the conflict, been robbed of all identity papers, money and live in constant fear, without access to healthcare or security. Photo courtesy of Doctors Without Borders.

Join emergency physicians Mohammed Dalwai from South Africa and Janis Tupesis from UW-Madison as they discuss and demonstrate the opportunities for mobile technology to improve medicine, what it takes to found a start-up,and the challenges of building mobile apps to improve emergency care.

Faced with few resources as he tended to patients in war zone across Africa and Asia, Dalwai co-founded The Open Medicine Project South Africa to develop a mobile application to ensure the most critical patients are cared for first. With prompts and pop-ups, it helps eliminate life-threating errors common in overburdened hospitals and clinics. Dalwai was named a TEDGlobal Fellow after co-founding the Open Medicine Project.

Tupesis, the former residency program director at the UW Department of Emergency Medicine and the GHI-Graduate Medical Education liaison, has been key in developing medical education at UW-Madison, West and East Africa. He has been appointed to roles specifically focusing on the interface of education and global health with the African Federation of Emergency Medicine, the International Federation of Emergency Medicine, the Global Emergency Medicine Academy and the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.

A GHI Seed Grant brought Dalwai and Tupesis together to develop a new mobile phone application that will focus on improving emergency care across resource limited settings by giving clinicians the access to the information they need when they need it.

Tupesis-Dalwai poster Tupesis Dalwai-poster