Doctors without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Netherlands based medical messenger app Siilo, have joined forces to facilitate digital communication across MSF’s operational centres globally. With immediate effect, two of these centres will roll out the messenger app to support safe and quick communications among healthcare professionals whilst working on various international humanitarian programmes.
The agreement is the result of MSF’s carefully planned path towards advancing secure and hands-on digital communication with, and between, various operational centres that often work under challenging, if not life-threatening conditions. Siilo’s organisational network and support system will offer an important contribution to the collaboration between teams and healthcare professionals in MSF projects, enabling opportunity for direct and secure communications.
Special operational tools
‘We are well aware that MSF is seeking secure and efficient messaging tools and it is a privilege to help provide those to fit their operational challenges,’ says Siilo CEO Joost Bruggeman. ‘While our partnership is still in the early stages, we highly appreciate the important role MSF plays in society. MSF delivers vital care around the world and Siilo is proud to facilitate the communications needed to ensure their work is well coordinated.’
The implementation started at the end of last year, with Siilo and MSF closely collaborating on the rollout to ensure selected operational centres were able to go live simultaneously. Directeur Médical Adjoint West and Central Africa, Ismael Adjaho, says about the proceedings: ‘MSF is making a catalytic change in the Agboville district by connecting remote area patients to specialists through general practitioners. That is possible with Siilo, and it is changing patient’s lives. The patients are so grateful for such use of technology.’
About Médecins Sans Frontières
Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters or exclusion from health care in more than 60 countries. Doctors Without Borders was founded in 1971 as the first non-governmental organisation to provide both emergency medical assistance and bear witness publicly to the plight of the people it assists. Doctors Without Borders is an international network with branches in 23 countries.
About Siilo
Founded in 2016, Siilo is a secure medical communication app designed for healthcare professionals. Through encrypted chat based messaging and voice and video calling, healthcare professionals can discuss and coordinate patient care with colleagues within and beyond their organisational walls. Today, Siilo is the largest medical network in Europe with over 400.000 members who have exchanged over 500 million messages to date. The Siilo Messenger app is free for individuals and teams to coordinate patient care, expand their professional network, and significantly reduce time-to-decision by exchanging best practices. Sillo also offers organisation and departmental services used by renowned institutions such as Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam, Berlin-based Charité, and St. George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and associations such as the Irish General Practice Nurses Education Association.
Photo: Khayelitsha field hospital, Cape Town, South Africa. Photo credit: MSF/Rowan Pybus.
