Virtual Doctors Blog - Lavan Nallainathan

This blog will capture the many diverse roles played by employees and volunteers across the Virtual Doctors. I’m a recent graduate, now working as an SEO Executive for a digital marketing agency in London. I am fascinated by the incredible work done by the Virtual Doctors and this is the seventh instalment in a series of blogs about the organisation and its staff. 

 For this month’s blog update, I spoke to Lavan Nallainathan who has been volunteering with the charity for the last four years. Lavan is based in the UK and, with a background in software engineering, works as a Cloud Solutions Architect for Microsoft. It’s safe to say that his skills have been invaluable to the Virtual Doctors in his role as a volunteer software developer.  

Lavan (seen on the right in the thumbnail image) is part of the volunteer team that built the Virtual Doctors platform used on smartphones and browsers. Thanks to this software, health workers in Zambia are able to quickly send patient data to volunteer doctors in the UK for diagnosis, therefore providing Zambian communities with a higher level of care than would have been available. It is an ingenious piece of telemedicine software, which has brought a great deal to Zambian communities.  

 Lavan’s most rewarding experience since his time with the Virtual Doctors came when he was fortunate enough to go to Zambia and visit the clinics in which the software is being used. He was able to see first-hand the difference the system has made to clinicians and the positive impact it is having on the patients. This is what he enjoys most about working with the charity as, he says ‘I am being given an opportunity to use my skills to help make a difference’.  

The team regularly receive feedback from the clinical officers and health workers in Zambia about the usability and effectiveness of the software. Overall, the feedback has been very positive and they are continuously improving the system based on the feedback received. Lavan says, ‘we are currently working on a mobile responsive version of the website that doctors can use to communicate with clinical officers in the field.’ With these constant updates comes the main challenge in Lavan’s role with the charity. He has to manage his time effectively to ensure that the demands of the users are met and the system is kept running.  

When asked about the future of the charity, Lavan is very confident about the scalability of the software as well as its ability to assist the user well into the future. He says, ‘we have designed the software to be able to meet changing user requirements’, and so it will serve any community in Africa, which the charity expands into. The mobile application has been engineered to function in areas with little to no connectivity and furthermore, the software leverages open-source technologies and runs completely within the cloud. This is means it is able to scale in order to meet any user’s needs.  

Lavan’s work for the Virtual Doctors as part of a team of software developers has already brought much needed help to clinical officers in Zambia and Malawi and, thanks to their hard work and dedication, will continue to do so well in the future.