GOAL 3’s patient zero, the first step in making an impact

April 2021

In January 2021 our first pilot study in Malawi started. This study was done in the Mercy James Pediatric Centre as part of the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. The goal of this study was to validate the intended use of IMPALA v2.0 and gather more design inputs.

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During our pilot study in Malawi, a baby deteriorated unexpectedly while being monitored by our IMPALA monitoring system. Our research nurse Alice saw the low oxygen saturation on the IMPALA system and saw the baby was having breathing problems. She was able to intervene in time together with the nursing staff and the baby recovered. Without intervention, this could have led to brain damage or even death.

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Having this direct positive impact this early in our existence came as a big surprise as the pilot is not designed for doing these interventions. However, this story is not about us, it's about health workers such as Alice that can be enabled and empowered to make these interventions. We are just happy that we could support them!

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Stories like these are what motivates us to keep on building towards fair and accessible healthcare for everyone. We hope that this “patient zero” will be the first of many to come.

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This project is part of the EDCTP2 program supported by the European Union.

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