BBC Tech Life Interview

In an interview with the BBC's Shiona McCallum, CEO Galen Murdock discusses the latest in combating child malnutrition through innovative technology.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Galen Murdock on BBC's Tech Life segment

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In a recent interview with BBC's Tech Life segment, ShareMy.Health's co-founder and CEO, Galen Murdock, shed light on the company's groundbreaking efforts to revolutionize healthcare access in regions with limited internet connectivity.

ShareMy.Health's software utilizes Ditto to form a mesh network across devices which enables healthcare workers to gather and share vital data on child malnutrition even in regions with no internet connectivity. Through Ditto, information on a child's health can be logged and shared with other devices using a relay system, facilitating seamless two-way communication between healthcare providers and caregivers.

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Galen expressed his passion for leveraging technology to make a meaningful impact on global healthcare.

"Our mission is to empower healthcare workers and communities with the tools they need to combat child malnutrition effectively," said Murdock. "And if those resources aren't available, to marshal what resources we can to bring aid to them."

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ShareMy.Health's initiatives have already made a significant impact in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. By the end of April, the company aims to expand its reach to 14 countries, including some in Central and South America, further amplifying its impact on global healthcare.

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Transcript of the interview (beginning at 19:09)

Shiona:

Finally, today on Tech Life, we are looking at healthcare in areas of the world where there might not be any internet connectivity. An American company called ShareMy.Health is helping healthcare workers to gather and share data on child malnutrition in West Africa using software called Ditto. It means information on a child's health can be logged on a smartphone with Ditto software installed, and that device can share the information with a similar device and another and another and another even when there is no internet connection. Think of it as a relay. Well, I’ve been speaking with Galen Murdock, the co-founder & CEO of ShareMy.Health, and he’s been telling me about how he got into his work.

Galen:

I’ve spent about 30 years of my career trying to make a difference in both healthcare and technology. I love that intersection. Particularly, I’m an expert in electronic medical records. So for me, my background, I’m kind of a classically trained nerd, but I happen to spend most of my time working with people and trying to build systems whether locally or even nationally and globally to connect healthcare across the world.

Shiona:

Talk to me about what you are doing to help malnourished children in Africa.

Galen:

We approached one of our clients, they are a global non-profit, and we asked, “where do you need help?” and they said, “Actually, child nutrition,” and that struck a chord for me. My story is one where when I was growing up, after my parents divorced, we were pretty hungry. I love my mom, I love my dad, I’m grateful for my neighbors who opened their fridges, but we were food insecure and there were times where it was tough to get the food that we needed. So I have a complicated relationship with food. This is now my third hunger-related startup. I have a strong passion for helping children interrupt that cycle. And so, for us, when we approached our client we adapted our screening technology, our intervention technology, our privacy and communication technology to the situation of ‘how do I help a mother or a community health worker or everywhere in between, screen for malnutrition and then communicate that not only to the caregivers but to the infrastructure that is supporting me. All the referral networks, the clinics, even the federal government when necessary.

Shiona:

So talk to me about the technology you use to help malnourished children.

Galen:

It’s real that software doesn't feed people. Yet we can help a lot of problems get out of the way. One of the biggest issues is ‘how do I get data off any device that I'm using? How do I get devices to talk to each other without the Internet?’ After months of research, we came across the technology called Ditto. What Ditto does is it replicates data like a relay between devices. In our application, we can now have hundreds of devices offline communicating with each other as though they were all connected on a network because in fact they are connected on a network. It's a wireless network over Bluetooth LE and other technologies. We can communicate rapidly, almost instantly, between phones as far as 80 meters away. But what's more is that instead of just having offline mode, we have an offline fabric thanks to Ditto. So now we can coordinate the efforts of a number of people who happened to be close to each other and, vitally, we can communicate by relay information from a mother's phone to the person delivering milk back to the bank, which eventually gets online and then gets communicated securely back to the cloud for ShareMy.Health. Then we can look at nutrition programs nationally. So now if I want to get a message to a mother, I don't have to just rely on SMS or other connectivity. I can actually cause the message to get relayed to her; it may take a few minutes, hours, days, but those communications can happen in both directions in quick enough time to actually make behavioral changes in those first 1000 days, even in the first 2000 days of a child's life.

Shiona:

People listening will be thinking ‘well, hang on. how does that work?’ and I know that you touched briefly there on the technology. But can you really explain to me how it works when there is no Internet connection that these files can still be accessed and updated?

Galen:

What Ditto does is that it uses any available radio on the phone to first get the data off of the device to another device, thereby synchronizing peer-to-peer, and then the technology replicates further across the mesh to talk to any other device until every device is as satisfied as it can be that it has communicated as much as it has off the device and that it has finally landed in the cloud and replicated to databases.

Shiona:

Once this technology is deployed and then you're using the smartphones for screening and monitoring… what real-time solutions and results are you seeing after this is happening?

Galen:

First, our system helps measure the height and weight and other characteristics of an individual that, according to WHO guidelines, allows us to determine if this child at 24 months or 36 months, even down to the day, where do they fall statistically from the norm? Each child is assigned a color based on the worst of several metrics. So a parent can understand it as going from red to yellow to green, but what really matters is the set of interventions. What are the things we can do to help this person get better? It’s medications, it’s supplements, it’s ‘go see a doctor’, ‘no, go see a doctor now’. And so they become willing partners in intervention and measurement. They set up their own goals they live their own lives and control their own data. Our job is to empower them to be connected to resources that are available in their community, and if those resources aren't available, to marshal what resources we can to bring aid to them. Whether it be locally to the clinic or through great partners like UNICEF, Helen Keller International, or the WHO.

Shiona:

That is Galen Murdock, the co-founder and CEO of ShareMy.Health. They are already helping children in Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and will be in 14 countries by the end of April, including some in Central and South America.

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