Shimba Technologies has launched a mobile health application. Dubbed "Med Africa" the application provides medical and health information to its users. The launch was held on Tuesday evening at the Sarova Panafric in Nairobi. MedAfrica's main feature is a doctors listing that shows medical professionals nearest to the user's location. Users can call the doctors from the application to book appointments. Kenya has a population of 40 million and 7,000 registered medical practitioners. With a mobile phone penetration of 26 million, MedAfrica is looking to bridge the health provider gap through the use of mobile applications.
 

MedAfrica also give a lists of hospitals starting with those nearest to the user. Users can also self diagnose their symptoms to have an idea of what may be causing a medical condition and how to deal with it. Other information include first aid procedures , drug information and medical news.

"Our mission is to Increase access to health related content and services to save lives and build a healthy population, our target being to reach every house hold in Africa. In this case we have a road map in place where we launch the product in Kenya then scale it to other African Countries" said Jackline Cheruiyot, MedAfrica Team Leader.

Steve Mutinda, founder of Shimba Technologies and the application's lead developer says that the application started off Tuvitu, another application developed by Shimba.

Tuvitu is a mobile application and content aggregator in the form of the Snaptu before Snaptu's acquisition by Facebook. Several applications are served on a dashboard in form of a widget, each with a specific function. Major applications widgets on Tuvitu include Nation Media's news widget and a real estate widget. MedAfrica was formerly a medical information widget on Tuvitu.

Shimba Technologies saw much potential in the medical widget and spun it off as an independent application to Kenya before it expanded it's sights to the rest of Africa.

MedAfrica earlier this year emerged as the top application in Pivot 25, a mobile application that pitted 25 applications with top applications winning cash prizes, developer goodies and a trip to San Francisco's Demo for the top application. Med Africa stood out at DEMO receiving some interest from publications covering the event. Steve Mutinda says that their day trip to San Francisco was quite a learning experience.

The application is still under development and is currently available on Nokia Series 40 , Nokia Symbian devices, Android devices and general Java phones. MedAfrica will also be available on Unstructured Service Supplementary Data (USSD) for non Internet-enabled devices and WAP platform for low end devices.

MedAfrica will get its content from content partners such as the Nairobi Hospital , open data that has been released by Kenya's government' amongst other sources. Speaking during the launch, Catherine Ngahu, Kenya ICT Board Chairperson called for medical institutions and health providers to support Med Africa in generation of content.

Nokia, mLab and the iHub have been instrumental in assistance offered to Shimba Technologies in relation to Med Africa.

Notable personnel in the MedAfrica team include Mbugua Njihia, a renown tech entrepreneur who was behind MedAfrica's winning pitch at Pivot 25. Paul Okech is Shimba's Business Development advisor, he draws experience from similar positions in the past at Eastman Kodak and Zain Group who later sold out to Airtel.

Shimba Technologies has been behind the development of mobile solutions such as CDFMonitor, KTraffic, RichMobile, and Sarova. CDFMonitor allows constituents to view information on Constituence Development Fund allocation and use in Kenya. KTraffic shows camera views of Kenyan roads and suggestions of alternate roads thus allowing users to avoid traffic jams.

Shimba Technologies plans to release an appeal and donations philanthropic platform called Sponsor Kenya that also got shortlisted by the ICT Board's Tandaa Grant and the second version of the Tuvitu platform in 2012.