AB: Hello, everyone. I’m Ansley Bowen. I’m Associate of Community Development at HITLAB, and I am so excited to bring on our next guest. We have Dr. Mohamed Baby. He’s a medical officer from the United Nations, and he’s going to be covering digital health on the front lines and how we can increase health equity. So, Dr. Baby, it’d be great if you would come on screen and share your presentation with the audience today.

MB: Good morning, everybody. My name is Dr. Mohamed Baby, as Ansley said. I’m a medical officer. I have my PhD. I am medical emergency response in charge of casualties in the field, in the UN Mission Field, so since 20 years ago. So, I am certified medical evacuation, casualty management from the war zone missions. So, in charge of many missions, currently based in Somalia and covering also Sudan. And my main core activities is the evacuation of casualties, management of medical care from the field to the high level medical care, either to Nairobi where we have our Level 2 hospital in Kenya or Johannesburg in South Africa, which is the nearest or Cairo in Egypt in the case of Sudan. So, I’m good interacting with a lot of UN agencies based in Africa, like WHO. We work as WHO standard UNICEF and international NGO also to help enhance through the promotion, education of health care in this part of Africa, where the system of health is very poor and needs a lot of improvement. So, we are facing a lot of challenges during our daily practice. I can say I managed successfully for the last 15 years, the evacuation for more than 5,000 casualties in many missions, like Iraq, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, where I’m currently based, Afghanistan. So, I’m still working in this area as this certified response emergency medical. Also, additional to that, I have my degree on medical logistics and supply chain management, which is the distribution, replenishment of medical supply from the manufacturer to the field mission in coordination with the UNHQ and LSD logistic division and procurement. So I’m working closely. So currently now I’m here on the field to do that. So we are using mainly a lot of system to manage, and seeing that not only myself but with a strong team, I can see. And we cannot – we are not – we are performing those job without a lot of challenge. It’s not so easy. And security is our first challenge we are facing. So attacks, a lot of calamities, natural disasters, everything. So but we manage to fix in all the missions up to Level 2 hospitals like Mogadishu where I’m sitting now, Khartoum. So in addition on that one we have a lot of sectors in Somalia, like we have a Level 1 hospital, field hospital, so which are linked with us from the field to the – to Mogadishu where we have our Level 2. So we start with the stabilization of the patients, stabilized care, after stabilization decision among the team and to provide the medical care. Seeing that also we have the civilian living near the UN facilities, we provide this civilian care to them. This cannot be done without the great support of UNICEF and a lot of humanitarian efforts in Africa. So we manage our patients using a lot of system, a digital system. We are using telemedicine to manage the casualties from the frontline up to the level care of medical. So this system has its advantages and is a convenient also, so but we can say with the support of all – and the teamwork we are performing here, it is a well done, well conducted. We have ground ambulances, we have helicopters, we have air ambulances which are helping us and a strong logistic support on the ground. In addition on that one also, I am certified to provide also the combat tactical to the soldier before the deployment and also provide medical care, like continuous medical CME to the UN workers also and humanitarian workers in the field. Okay, that is me. Thank you. That is, okay, the hospital information system we are using with the purpose to problem and also the advantage we have. So firstly, what is the hospital information system we are using on the field? It is an information system to manage the data of the patient information and basically to design and manage this information and to share with the healthcare, high level and also the status of the patient and to predict. We face a lot of problems in the management of this. Basically, the safe recording of the patient details. It is sometimes very difficult, as I say, in difficult conditions like in security where we have attack, bomb attack, fire, natural disaster, like, yeah. And there is also a possibility of misplaced information of the staff. That is mainly of the problem. But also we do have a lot of advantage also related to this. We have a lot of benefits. Mainly, we are minimizing life saving. We are reducing the medical cost to prevent the cause and retesting of the patient. If I can give an example for one medical evacuation from the field to the higher level, if you have to take it, for example, from Mogadishu to Nairobi, a citation air ambulance can be USD33,000. So managing the patient from the field stabilized can minimize the cost effect. Also, that reduces constantly the paperwork related. So all is stored in the system and shared with all the stakeholders. Also, it minimizes the medical error leading, for example, a case of head injury, we generally see very early on in the field. And we have a very good med- evac team which can collect the patient and already alert the Januoxys in advance and prepare what to do if we have to prepare the surgery, we have to make on hold and the surgery team to provide the adequate care to the casualty, stabilize and save life. We have a lot of advantage on this one also. So we are using a lot of a version of medical equipment like ultrasound, we have a modern digital ultrasound, we have a digital x-ray which can be connected easily to the monitors and also to the mobile phone of all the health worker and provide the correct information. And this correct information can help to provide a correct treatment on time, adequate treatment on time, and life saving, cost minimized also, very modern version also. So that is our clinic here. So we face in such war zone and frontline, I can give like head injury, abdominal injury, this kind of digital ultrasound machine practitioner, we train a lot, I can say we are a project pilot in the United Nations here currently. So this will give a very good image transmitted to higher level physician. So, we provide the care and we organize in timely manner and on time, the medical evacuation to save the life. So that is our Level 1 plus here in Somalia, we have the same facilities over field missions in Sudan, we have also in Yemen where our medical evacuation team are providing 24 hours, 7 days, so we are on standby all the time to respond any time. Okay, saying that we are on the ground as humanitarian actors and also the digital system is helping us a lot, a lot, a lot to save life, minimize cost effectiveness, also a very good and great collaboration with the other colleagues over the world, especially on the benefit and service of humanitarian. So thank you.

AB: Thank you so much Dr. Baby. It was great to have you on. Thank you again for your time today