4 minute read

Vula Mobile has 6,206 facilities across South Africa with 20 000 registered health care workers currently using the app. Read below to learn how Vula’s large footprint across South Africa enabled them to greatly assist when Covid-19 hit our shores.

The Vula Mobile health technology platform that was founded in 2014, started with the purpose of decreasing the pressure on health care workers. The fragmented South African healthcare system with its broken referral chain was accelerating the high rates of mortalities and morbidities. Trying to obtain advice from specialists and referring patients to tertiary centres proved to be a major challenge, especially in the rural areas of South Africa.

Vula is specifically designed to meet these challenges by allowing doctors and nurses to discuss, and quickly and seamlessly refer patient cases from primary to secondary or tertiary centres.The Covid-19 pandemic contributed to immense pressure on the healthcare system in our country, which led Vula to rapidly pivot to support a range of medical communication requirements.

The overwhelming number of patients in need of care in Covid-19 facilities increased the need for triage admissions and the management of referrals, which is why Vula was adopted to make referrals in four different provinces. The use of the Vula Mobile app allowed a total of 7380 patients to be referred to ICUs, Field Hospitals, and the other suitable facilities. With the third wave upon us, this number will greatly increase as Vula is continuously extending their support.

When Covid-19 was declared a national state of disaster, Vula Mobile partnered up with non-profit organisation, Gift of the Givers.

Gift of the Givers raised funds to assist medical professionals and hospitals in the response to the expected rise in Covid-19 cases and the Vula Mobile app was used to ensure that these funds were distributed to the areas that needed it the most.

As healthcare workers were managing more Covid-19 cases, the need for remote academic meetings on the subject became prevalent. Vula provided an enterprise version of Zoom to groups of health professionals as well as to departments using the app. During 2020, a total of 539 meetings were held with a total of 8,969 participants.

National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) Helpline was overwhelmed with calls from the public, soVula set up a portal where experts could remain on call to allow healthcare workers to ask pertinent questions on the subject and collaborate with each other. During this time, 335 doctors were trained remotely by the COVID experts on call.

Doctors on Call

Covid-19 Doctors on Call, a national helpline where the public could receive free telephonic medical advice regarding the pandemic was launched to assist South Africans.

The program was established by the Kwa-Zulu Natal Doctors Healthcare Coalition (KZNDHC), one of the largest doctor associations in South Africa, in partnership with Usizo Advisory Solutions and Vula Mobile.The helpline was extremely effective in reducing the number of visits to clinics, to ultimately curb the spread of the virus and reduce the likelihood of frontline healthcare workers getting infected and further disabling the healthcare system.

Over 40 000 patients were served by the Covid Doctors on call.

Total of 2907 patients were referred for free Covid testing.

There were 63 on-call doctors who volunteered.

All the doctors associated with this initiative were trained to provide advice according to the NICD regulations and national health guidelines standard operating processes. The Vula Mobile app is used to document and report all calls made to the Doctors on Call Helpline, which is essential in monitoring the spread of the virus, as well as tracking outbreak areas. Collected data will be stored by the NICD to be studied and analysed for patterns which may prove to be useful should potential similar events arise in the future.

Free Covid-19 Testing for Healthcare Workers

Vula Mobile Covid-19 Dashboards

The need for Health Care Workers to know their Covid status became crucial which motivated Vula to partner with a group of pharmacies to provide free Covid tests to health professionals, specifically those without medical aid. To date a total of 19, 747 health workers have been referred to free testing sites and all documentation on test samples were recorded on the Vula app.

Vula created National and Provincial dashboards from data collected through the system, which enabled them to send weekly and monthly reports as required by The Department of Health (DOH) and other stakeholders.

Health Science Education

The global pandemic is uncharted territory, which means that the need for education on the subject is critical. The Universities of Pretoria, Cape Town and Stellenbosch utilised Vula as a teaching system to replace the submission of paper-based reports. This method of remote and individualised training of medical, nursing, physio and clinical students enabled distinctive feedback and a space for students to ask questions in one-to-one chats. The use of Vula Mobile allowed for 8, 363 patient scenarios to be ‘referred’ or submitted by students to their educators.