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In This Issue:
Vikram Kumar, MD, is a first year resident in BWH Pathology. When asked how he finds time to run a public health care technology company during a demanding residency, he responds, “No TV, no car.”
His company, Dimagi, is developing appropriate technology for diseases in the field, such as the design of a smart card to assist the delivery of anti-retroviral therapy through Zambia and hand-held data collection tools for nurses tending to patients in rural Indian villages.
Kumar’s work with Dimagi landed him a spot on MIT Technology Review’s Top 100 Innovators under the age of 35 last year. The hi-tech publication also named him Humanitarian of 2004. He is careful to point out that he is only one of several people working on these projects with MIT Media Lab and Media Lab Asia.
In India, “Ca : sh” was developed in conjunction with Media Lab Asia and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The technology provided field nurses with access to medical data for their patients and a means to add to it electronically.
“These nurses care for thousands of patients, and otherwise, data collection can be very shoddy,” he said.
The Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies in South Africa directed Dimagi to help them write HIV Confidant, simple encryption software that allows African health care providers to use handheld computers to distribute confidential AIDS test results.
Kumar is most excited about the smart-card project that Dimagi is co-developing in Zambia for the Center for Disease Control. “Patients can take them from clinic to clinic, and it could be like having their medical records in their pockets,” Kumar said. “Our hope is that with an inexpensive smart card, we can manage treatment more effectively and ultimately prevent costly drug resistance.”
Of his diverse applications for improving health care in the developing world Kumar says, “We’re just looking at practical ways to leverage existing technology to better manage illnesses and diseases.” By joining together his interests in medicine and technology, this young entrepreneur is building a world of possibility for people in need.