IBM and David Clark Cause have announced a Kenyan team of developers who designed the Mbali Health application as the Middle East and Africa regional winner of the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge.
The application connects patients to care providers in a socially distanced way.
With the Covid-19 pandemic actively spreading among citizens and with countries facing increased lockdown procedures, it was increasingly difficult for patients to gain access to medical care in a safe and socially distanced manner.
Through the Call for Code Challenge, the developers of Mbali Health created a solution powered and secured by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers and Hyper Protect DBaas with MongoDB.
It has a simple chat interface that gives the patients easy access to healthcare providers through WhatsApp.
With over 90 per cent mobile penetration, the application is effortlessly accessible to a large population of Kenyans allowing for them to interact and receive diagnosis from physicians from the comfort of their homes.
As the winner for the Middle East and Africa region, Mbali Health joins Call for Code’s ecosystem, which unites the world’s millions of developers and data scientists to unleash the power of cloud, AI, blockchain, and IoT technologies
Mbali Health will be awarded a total of $5000(Sh557000) which will go towards future development and deployment of the application.
“We are honoured to have been part of the Call for Code challenge. During this pandemic we saw the struggle that the patients and clinics were facing and sought to develop a solution,” said Sam Wilks of Mbali Health.
The 2020 Call for Code challenge brought together developers, start-ups, and enterprise developers to create solutions to address the world's current Covid-19 pandemic in addition to climate change.
In addition to the winning team, the Call for Code Challenge had regional finalists from other African countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria tackling education, health, and climate change.
“At IBM, we do our best to apply data, knowledge, computing power, and insights to solve difficult problems. The regional winners, Mbali Health, have embodied the Call for Code Challenge to have developers ambitiously tackle the pressing issues,” said Caroline Mukiira Country General Manager - East Africa.
