posted Jan 29, 2012 1:51 PM by Michelle Lin
Every year, the KidsCareEverywhere family continues to grow in numbers. This past year, we celebrated all of our accomplishments worldwide. We also bid farewell to Jamie Sharp, who was our Development Director and Ambassador of International Relations. She is the well-deserved and inaugural recipient of the annual "It's All About the Kids" KidsCareEverywhere Award. |
posted Jan 20, 2012 11:43 PM by Michelle Lin
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updated Jan 21, 2012 12:24 PM
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KCE welcomes Vanuatu as a new outreach site. PEMSoft Online is now available at the Vila Central Hospital, where physicians, nurses, and students use it for bedside care and education. Vanuatu is an island in the South Pacific Ocean.
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posted Jan 17, 2012 2:38 PM by Michelle Lin
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updated Jan 17, 2012 2:38 PM
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KCE executive director Dr. Ron Dieckmann lead a team to the village of Ukwala in western Kenya in December, 2011 to train rural physicians and clinic staff in PEMSoft software utilization. The remote Matibabu Clinic, where the team spent two days, is in its final weeks of existence, as staff prepare to move operations to a new modern hospital for women and children a few miles away. The new facility is a product of years of fundraising by the Matibabu Foundation--based in Nairobi, Kenya and Oakland, California and will be the most advanced health care facility in hundreds of miles. The clinic and new hospital are actively supported by the grandmother of President Barack Obama, who is a neighbor and patient of Dr. Gail Wagner, the Hayward-based oncologist who co-founded Matibabu—a word that means “healing” in Swahili.
Dr. Dieckmann, his daughter Hayley, and wife Patty Gates spent the day at the crowded, dilapidated clinic training and installing PEMSoft software with the staff. When the new hospital opens, the staff will install the software on the computer network—so that all clinical staff will have instant access to state-of-the-art medical information. This represents a gigantic improvement in medical reference support: the current clinic has only a single outdated hard copy medical reference for clinicians caring for over 30,000 patients a year. Malaria, HIV/AIDS TB, diseases of the skin, and diarrhea are the most common conditions.
The Matibabu Foundation executive director Daniel Ogola will be interviewed this January, 2012. He has gained significant attention in Kenya because of his relentless fight to improve care of impoverished children in rural communities.
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posted Oct 12, 2011 5:04 PM by Michelle Lin
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updated Jan 30, 2012 11:05 AM by Michael McGuirk
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Dr. Ronald Dieckman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, and Haile Girma
KidsCareEverywhere (KCE) Executive Director Dr. Ronald Dieckmann and KCE Board Advisor Haile Girma, traveled to Washington DC in September, 2011 to meet with Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the Ethiopian Minister of Health. Ethiopia is engaged in a massive upgrade of their resource-depleted health system, involving construction of multiple new medical schools, development of electronic databases and e-learning tools, and creation of internet connectivity for health providers countrywide. The project is being supported by the World Bank.
The minister was in the US for the United Nations meetings in September, and met with KCE leaders in an effort to secure technology partners to assist with his country’s health system transformation. Dr. Dieckmann and Mr. Girma met the Minister during proceedings of a national conference organized by the venerated People-to-People to encourage Ethiopian diaspora to help support the Ethiopian health system project with expertise, electronic resources and money.
“The Minister was extremely cordial and complimentary about KidsCarEverywhere, and stated specifically in his keynote address at the conference that he wants his country work with us to bring state-of-the-art medical knowledge to physicians in his country,” commented Dr. Dieckmann. The Minister and Dr. Mesfin Araya, the provost of the Millenium Medical School in Addis Ababa, reviewed the PEMSoft software and declared that it would greatly assist his physician community, who already use American English and American textbooks.
“KidsCareEverywhere has a unique opportunity to assist Ethiopia. Implementing PEMSoft in Ethiopia will truly improve health care and save lives of many children across the country” added Mr. Girma, who emigrated from Addis Ababa to California at age 21, but provides ongoing support to his native country. Dr. Dieckmann and Mr. Girma will lead a delegation of KCE volunteers to Addis Ababa in mid-March, 2012. |
posted Aug 29, 2011 5:34 PM by Jamie Sharp
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updated Aug 29, 2011 6:12 PM
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This August, Dr. Chuck Clemons brought KCE to Zambia! Using the innovative KidsCareEverywhere training module, Dr. Clemons donated advanced decision-support software and supporting training to 16 under-resourced pediatricians from the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, Zambia. UTH has roughly 350 pediatric beds, though Clemens' team claims this number can be misleading, "because when there are more patients than beds, you just start putting 2 kids in each bed, then 3, etc".
UTH is the only tertiary care center in the country of 13 million people, and is also the only public health hospital in Lusaka (population 2-3 million). Sadly, the hospital bears the burden of advanced pathology and volume of patients.
PEMSoft is a valuable decision-support tool, particularly for physicians in such overwhelmed treatment care sites and educational centers in the developing world.Dr. Clemons took is trip in conjunction with the Georgian Foundation and included a visit to the CDC and Child Protective Services. We look forward to learning about the effects and benefits of introducing the software, and applaud Dr. Clemons' volunteerism! |
posted Aug 15, 2011 2:13 PM by Jamie Sharp
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updated Aug 18, 2011 2:09 PM
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Join the KidsCareEverywhere family this October at our Annual Gala, "Growing our Global Family". The evening will be hosted at Dale and Bob's house in Orinda, and will feature international cuisine, beverages, music, and goods!
October 22nd, 20 11 from 2-5pm 41 Estates Dr. in Orinda, CA 94563 $125/ person RSVP at info@KidsCareEverywhere.org
The program will highlight our ongoing partnerships in Rwanda, Uganda, and Vietnam through anecdotes from our international ambassadors Dr. Monica McMillan, Dr. Opal Taylor, Alex Miller, and Trevor Brooks. KidsCareEverywhere Founder Dr. Ronald Dieckmann will share the global vision for KidsCareEverywhere, and highlight some of 2011's successful programs. Of course, don't forget to visit our international market place for reasonably priced goods and gifts from around the world, and to sample food from around Ethiopia, Vietnam, and South America. Save the date and join the celebration! |
posted Jul 22, 2011 2:21 PM by Jamie Sharp
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updated Jul 25, 2011 10:13 AM
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The 2011 Board Retreat was held on July 17, 2011 and hosted by Treasurer Denis McGuirk. The annual retreat was attended by all members of the executive board, including Dr. Ron Dieckmann, Dr. Michelle Lin, Fran Shreiberg, Denis McGuirk, and Dr. Stevan Cavalier. Advisory board member David Hytha and Program Manager Jamie Sharp attended as well, and researchers Alex Miller and Julie Menezes presented data from their Latin America Needs Assessment. The packed agenda focused on programming objectives during the 2011-2012 fiscal year programming, as well as the 2012 Vietnam Program Internship and new outreach programs! |
posted Jul 21, 2011 1:19 PM by Jamie Sharp
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updated Jul 25, 2011 9:47 AM
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Dr. Monica McMillan and Dr. Opal Taylor, volunteer KidsCareEverywhere ambassadors, are headed for Rwanda this August and will keep us updated along the way! Follow their journey through this blog and stay tuned for updates about their trip! |
posted Apr 8, 2011 8:58 PM by Trevor Brooks
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updated Apr 8, 2011 9:33 PM
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Our internship came to a close this past week with a bang: The Vietnam Emergency Medicine conference in Hue. The entire experience was fantastic, but especially exciting was the opportunity to distribute PEMSoft to several dozen of the top emergency medicine doctors in Vietnam, most of whom are not specially trained to treat children and thus can benefit enormously from the software. We attended several fascinating lectures that in addition to teaching Alex and I loads more about what it takes to be a doctor, gave us a more complete view of Vietnamese emergency healthcare.
But it wasn't all fun and games. During the course of the conference, Alex and I worked to spread the gospel of PEMSoft along with the help of an all-star team of KidsCareEverywhere associates consisting of Beverly Bauman and Susan Brim. Together we installed PEMSoft on the computers of over 40 doctors and gave CDs and installation instructions to dozens more. Also, thanks to the generosity of the people from the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church, we were able to install a 51-inch monitor in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit so the doctors can have instantaneous bedside access to PEMSoft. And just when we thought our time in Hue couldn't get any better, several doctors that Alex and I had worked with over the course of our internship were in attendance at the conference, allowing us to catch up with a few of the friends we've made over the last six months.
This cathartic aspect of the conference was actually what I found the most moving. Not only did we get to reconnect with doctors we had previously worked with, but we got to reconnect with the city of Hue, one of the first places in Vietnam we had visited. To go back to the restaurants, cafes, and monuments that we had visited six months before (where many of the people working remembered us) and reminisce how just a short time ago we were completely overwhelmed by the bustle of Vietnam was startling. Now we don't blink when a motorbike zooms dangerously close, or shy away from bartering in the native tongue with a merchant who thinks they've found an easy mark. Alex and I have come a long way in these past months, and I can truly say that I am proud when someone jokingly calls me a 'nguoi Viet' - meaning person from Vietnam. Our internship in Vietnam has changed us both forever, and for the better, and that is a testament to the people who inhabit this great country. To all the people of Vietnam, the warm, welcoming, generous, affable, kind souls who have helped us improve children's lives (not to mention survive in a foreign land), we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Although our internship is over, our time in Vietnam is far from it, as we are both firmly committed to seeing through KCE's vision of transforming pediatric emergency healthcare in Vietnam.
Signing off from Vietnam,
Alex Miller and Trevor Brooks |
posted Apr 2, 2011 7:29 AM by Jamie Sharp
As our internship comes to a close, Trevor and I have had one last opportunity to revisit our friends in northern Vietnam. KidsCareEverywhere is committed to quantifying the efficacy of its programs so we have spent the last week revisiting the hospitals in Hoa Binh, Thai Binh, and Hanoi collecting feedback about the software. The results are in, and the doctors love PEMSoft! In addition to rave reviews, the doctors have provided us with insightful suggestions as to how to improve the software, such as expanding sections on certain diseases ubiquitous in Vietnam (like ‘pneumonia’ and ‘Dengue Fever’) and the addition of some commonly used drugs. Once enacted, these changes will make PEMSoft even more powerful. The more customized the software is for Vietnam, the more revolutionary it can be to Vietnam’s pediatric healthcare system. One glaring obstacle to PEMSoft’s utilization is the lack of computers in close proximity to the patients. Thanks to a generous donation by the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church in Washington state, we have begun to tackle this issue by installing large flat-screen monitors in the pediatric emergency departments in Hanoi’s National Hospital of Pediatrics and Hue Central Hospital. These beautiful screens are remarkably effective access points to PEMSoft’s Phoenix emergency protocols, as they allow resuscitation teams to consult the software in times of crisis. The screens propel their departments into information access at the bedside. One doctor even mentioned that they enable the exciting prospect of live video consults with doctors all over the world for complex cases. By supplying hardware in addition to software KidsCareEverywhere has increased its impact on emergency care. This time has been valuable not only for KidsCareEverywhere but also for ourselves personally. To see doctors using PEMSoft with their patients and to receive such positive feedback is quite gratifying. We have formed many friendships with the people here, which made it so rewarding to return. Vietnamese people are some of the nicest in the world and the chance to reconnect with our friends in Hoa Binh, Thai Binh, and Hanoi has been priceless. |
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