Juandré Klopper, 27, is the chief executive and founder of Cape MedTech and director and co-founder of the non-governmental platform Sponsor Medic. At Cape MedTech, he uses his dual love of medicine and technology to create innovative tools that improve healthcare delivery in under-resourced settings. He develops software that helps nurses, paramedics and doctors make fewer clinical errors. Sponsor Medic raises funds to support government health facilities through sending much-needed staff to places that are underfunded and understaffed, helping patients get better care. One of the projects he has worked on that he is most proud of is Triage Buddy. The software helps to ensure that patients are correctly triaged, which improves the care they get and the workflow of the health facility. The biggest challenge he has faced is leaving his comfort zone of working as a doctor. He sacrificed time and money to build something based on the belief that it would help people. “Only now am I starting to see the benefits of all the sacrifices. I could only endure this with the support of my family and my wife.” His advice to his younger self would be: “Believe in your ability to shape the future. Stop waiting for someone else to fix the problems; start building solutions to overcome the challenges.”
MBChB (Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery), Stellenbosch University, 2015-2020
Of all the projects I have taken on, the one I am most proud of must be Triage Buddy. When I was working as a community service medical doctor in the rural Western Cape, I started noticing patients were being mis-triaged, which greatly affects not only the care that patients get, but also disrupts the workflow of the clinic. Studies in SA have shown that effective triage can decrease waiting times in hospitals by up to a third!
So, I developed software to solve the problem and, because of my experience in rural medicine, I was able to build tools that are uniquely suited for use in Africa. This software has opened so many doors for my startup and not only did it lead me to meeting with the World Health Organisation and various health leaders across Africa, but I also sleep a little better at night knowing that patients are benefiting from all the late nights and hard work that went into building the software.
There are two South African doctors I have come to know over the years who have developed amazing products that have changed the way doctors work in SA and saved countless lives. Mohamed Dalwai was an emergency medicine doctor who co-found EMGuidance, a tool for health workers that I used almost daily. Then also William Mapham, an ophthalmologist who built Vula, a tool that drastically improved the referral process for healthcare workers. These two doctors paved the way and showed me that doctors can build tools that change the system they work in.