Computer whizz wins an innovator award
Gifted Thabang develops app to help state patients
Video games inspired the 22-year-old computer whizz to develop an app for Gauteng clinics.
Not just any old app. This one has just won the Premier’s Excellence Award for the province’s Innovator of the Year.
Speaking to Sowetan recently, Thabang Mposule said his love for video and computer games sparked his interest in programming.
“I’m a game enthusiast. I love the way they [apps] are developed,” Mposule said yesterday.
“It involves intense work and you have to be creative. They [apps] motivate me to want to learn more about building software.”
Mposule, who has dreams of owning a software development empire, designed a desktop application that captures patients’ data.
It’s helped Gauteng public clinics to score high on patient satisfaction: the provincial department obtained 83% on a patient-experience-of-care score after the app was rolled out at more than 300 clinics in Gauteng last year.
Mposule said he wanted to develop the app further by making it directly available to patients.
“I believe we can make it available to patients so that we can completely cut out the use of paper,” he said.
Other benefits are that clinic managers can see complaints in real time and respond immediately to challenges.
“Facility managers are able to pick up if there are problems such as long queues and lack of medications.
“This means they can respond to the problem quicker.”
Mposule, who is in his second year of study in information sciences at the University of SA, had just completed his internship at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital when he developed the tool that, he pointed out, can operate without the internet or data too.
After completing his Grade 12 in 2012, he enrolled for a certificate in information technology and computer sciences at Rhodes Technical College in Lenasia and studied up to level three.
He was exposed to software developing when he started working as an intern in the Chris Hani Baragwanath ICT directorate. He said he was honoured to have won the award.
“It makes me want to do more and push harder to bring change in the way government does things,” Mposule said.