iMOKO founder uses micro-credentialing to train new digital health workforce

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Picture: Lance O'Sullivan and Otago Polytechnic CEO Phil Ker sign a memorandum of understanding

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Clinician and digital health entrepreneur Lance O’Sullivan has launched a micro-credentialing scheme with Otago Polytechnic to train a new digital health workforce.

O’Sullivan developed iMOKO, an app that enables trained teachers at participating kohanga, day-care centres and schools to securely send health information about students with common conditions such as head lice and strep throat to a digital health team working in Auckland.

These digital health assessors respond with a diagnosis and a treatment plan and prescriptions are sent to the parents of caregivers via the iMOKO app.

O’Sullivan’s company, Navilluso Medical, has worked with Otago Polytechnic to develop a micro-credentialing scheme for the new digital health workforce that the app relies on. It uses EduBits to validate people’s capabilities, which are developed through experience.

O’Sullivan says we are living in a fast-moving world, where someone like him can be a doctor one year and transform into a digital health entrepreneur the next.

While he wants staff to be appropriately trained, he questions whether lengthy diplomas and degrees are appropriate for this fast-paced environment and believes the EduBits system is the answer.

“The pressing problem for the New Zealand health system is we don’t have enough clinicians in the right place for people to get access to health in a timely fashion,” he says.

“So how could we have more health workers that aren’t doctors and nurses that are able to be an access point for people with health needs without training another thousand doctors?

“I’m very confident that models like this are the way forward for potentially addressing those pressures.”

The EduBit is called iMOKO Digital Health Aide and comprises three modules, adding up to 200 hours of onsite training and experience.

“We are really excited about being able to take someone from an education space and turn them into a digital health worker,” O’Sullivan says.

Up to 300 educators across New Zealand have been trained and have or are using the iMOKO programme. Enrolling in the EduBits scheme is currently free for them.

“We will be encouraging them all to be on board, and the expectation is that they will be because we have got to a point to say it’s quite important that you have this qualification to give us confidence that you are capable of doing this assessment,” he says.

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