“ The lack of reliable data on the overall burden and causes of disease in sub-Saharan Africa is well known... coverage of vital registration systems is far too low in all countries to provide useful data. This lack of data needs to be addressed so that the priority given to different health interventions within a population will take into account the relative burden of diseases. ” —Nigel Unwin “ There can be no real growth without healthy populations. No sustainable development without tackling disease and malnutrition. No international security without assisting crisis-ridden countries. And no hope for the spread of freedom, democracy and human dignity unless we treat health as a basic human right. ” —Gro Brundtland, Former Director-General of WHO “ Children are our future, and their mothers are its guardians. And yet, this year alone, more than half a million women will die in pregnancy or childbirth. Almost 11 million children will die before they reach the age of five — 4 million of them in the first month of life. Almost all these deaths will happen in developing countries. A large number of them could be prevented. ” —Kofi Annan Tech for Human Health Software Engineering for Medical Science in the Developing World

Learn more about our latest projects!

child health
digitizing paper

Challenges in Global Health

Global health has provided us with some of the most exciting projects and work opportunities that we have experienced as technologists. The project objectives for improving healthcare, such reducing the prevalence of infectious diseases, and lowering under-5 mortality rates, are well-defined and quantitative. Technology has a critical role to play in this fight as the enabler of scalable data collection, real-time analytics, and scaling of life-saving innovations.

QED is working on several global projects in East Africa, collaborating with on-the-ground and international partners such as KEMRI, JOORTH, LSTM, ICAP, CDC, and BMGF. Some adversaries we face together include malaria, contracted through the world’s most deadly animal; HIV, the worst epidemic of our lifetimes (39M dead); stunting, the hidden tragedy affecting 25% of children; and under-5 child mortality, a critical measure for the development of humankind.

Many of our projects have started in Kisumu, a beautiful part of the world which we are very grateful for having brought us into the Global Health field.

Engineering Solutions

QED has been constructing software to equip metropolitan, rural, and mobile health clinics with the wherewithal to electronically collect clean data. Limitations in infrastructure present many technical challenges that require creativity and innovation to overcome. Examples include:

  • robustness to constant adjustment of medical workflows,
  • handling of adversarial internet conditions,
  • longitudinal case management,
  • building tidy data from fragmented databases, and
  • finding practical compromises between paper and digital systems.

We sincerely wish for QED to serve a vehicle for calibrating new generations of engineering professionals, sensitizing them to problems of universal importance through hands-on experience.

Child Mortality

Partners

Kenya Medical Research Institute
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