On Tuesday, February 20, mClinica Chief Operating Officer Vasil Rusinov spoke about the company’s eHealth innovations at the “Practicing the Principles for Digital Development” at The Hermitage in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The event, organized by the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), hosted by the United Nations in Washington, D.C., sought to promote the nine best practices for improving the use of technology in development. These include everything from understanding the existing ecosystem and using open standards and open source to addressing privacy and security and being data driven.
Though mClinica tries to exercise all nine best practices when building its products, some are more readily evident in the company’s efforts than others. Rusinov singled out the principle “design with the user” as an example, which has guided the development of SwipeRx, mClinica’s flagship platform for pharmacy professionals.
“We’ve built SwipeRx in close consultation with pharmacy professionals and organizations across Southeast Asia, and the end product reflects that: It solves real problems that to this point have largely gone unaddressed, such as the inconvenience of having to take continuing professional development (CPD) in-person,” said Rusinov, who was honored last year with a selection on the signature Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Rusinov was alluding to the fact that pharmacy professionals can now take their CPD entirely online through SwipeRx, on their own time and convenience. Some of the markets that mClinica operates in, such as the Philippines, have already extended formal recognition of the digital certificates that mClinica awards upon completion, and other countries are soon to follow.
That mClinica strives to practice the nine principles endorsed by DIAL is a testament to the company’s belief in the development community. A total of over 88 organizations join mClinica in supporting the principles, including the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mercy Corps, UNICEF, USAID, and the Grameen Foundation.
Though the nine principles served an overarching framework for the public sector leaders in attendance , the event focused in particular on how three of them – reuse and improve, design for scale, and build for sustainability – can be combined with technology to accelerate development in Southeast Asia and around the world.
Rusinov felt these principles, especially design for scale, were actively embodied by mClinica’s SwipeRx. He referenced the fact that the platform already has more than 65,000 users since its launch at the beginning of last year, including 1 in every 4 pharmacists in Indonesia and Cambodia, and 1 in every 3 in the Philippines.
“You can attribute SwipeRx’s success to the fact we’ve designed for scale since the very beginning. And that’s why I’m so proud to have continued the discussion on DIAL’s nine principles with other leaders from the public sector today: I know that their application will accelerate the development of Indonesia and other emerging markets around the world,” said Rusinov.
