Oulmes, Morocco January 28 2014
We are in Oulmes, a village of 7,500 people in the mountains in rural Morocco. It’s cold. The region is very poor. The health house we are working in is barely functioning. It is so cold we had to bring electrical heaters and the patients are wrapped in blankets that they brought themselves. There is a lack of running water, the bathrooms are not working in the labor and delivery department, but the people that work here are very engaged and open-minded. We could not have found a better place to perform our trial. If we can make it here, we make it anywhere. The team is amazing and in great spirits.
Yesterday we did 80 studies with two connected Sonosite M-turbos, the mobile DICOM app on the Sony phone, and Tricefy. Today, we have done 35 so far. We have four doctors with us on the caravan. The women working in the health house help us out in the project too. We send the studies to the reviewing clinics in Casablanca, Fes and Paris via the new version of Tricefy. Within 24 hours they have a reported back to us.
We had a large delegation of physicians and government officials all the way from the General Secretary of the Representatives for the Moroccan Health Ministry to local hospital directors visiting us today. The examination rooms were packed. Dagmar did a fantastic job describing our project and technology and they were all very impressed. Ultrasounds for expecting mothers should be a human right. With that, the impact of technology on the millennium goals could be huge.
The health house in Oulmes is very primitive, old and worn. The equipment, if any, is old. The internet coverage is poor but our installations are running very smoothly over the cellular network. It’s interesting how so many places on our planet just skipped fixed internet and went straight for high speed mobile networks instead.
We have a videographer here today filming the trial interviewing patients and physicians. The camera makes people a little nervous but it will be great to have this video to share our story and our mission.
We also had two acute deliveries when we were here and a couple of cases where our technology really made a huge difference. One has to think about what would have happened to these women if the caravan would not have been here.
Tomorrow the Mobile Ultrasound Patrol caravan is moving to the next location. In a couple of weeks we will be done with the data collection and start to analyze the data and write the report. We are in the process of interviewing world aid organizations like the UN, United Nations and the WHO World Health Organization to get their insight around sustainability.
We feel truly blessed to be a part of this mission and are so grateful to all the companies that support.