Digital records for palliative care across Africa

The same challenge kept coming up. The healthcare professionals Diana Nabunje Lubega spoke with described patients with life-limiting illnesses receiving fragmented care, paper-based records that were hard to follow from one provider to the next, and communities with limited access to specialist palliative care services.

Out of those conversations grew mPallCare. For the past few years she has led its development as a digital health platform designed to strengthen palliative care across Africa. She is a Software Engineer and Project Manager at MRT IT PEAKS LIMITED, and she says she "realised technology could help bridge these gaps." Working alongside clinicians as well as researchers and academic partners, the team began designing a platform that supports patient management, symptom monitoring and multidisciplinary communication, plus reporting and data-driven decision-making, she says, "while remaining practical for low-resource health settings."

“I don't want to build technology simply because we can. I want to build technology because someone, somewhere, is being left behind and they deserve a solution.”

Diana Nabunje Lubega

"What motivates me most is seeing technology become useful where it matters most," she says. The aim is "tools that help health workers spend more time caring for patients and less time struggling with fragmented information." Every feature, she says, is informed by conversations with healthcare providers and designed around real clinical workflows.

The work has changed how she leads. "I have learned that meaningful innovation requires listening before designing, collaborating across disciplines, and continuously improving based on feedback," she says. It has pushed her beyond software engineering into research, health systems, partnerships, and implementation.

Alongside mPallCare, she has led other digital solutions through MRT IT PEAKS LIMITED, including TradeX, Lendify, SaccoSphere, and CVAS, each addressing different challenges faced by businesses and communities. mPallCare, she says, "remains the project closest to my heart."

She also supports young people in technology and innovation, she says, and her broader commitment is to using technology to make healthcare more accessible for underserved communities.

She is keen that the credit is shared. mPallCare has been supported towards implementation and continued development by the University of Leeds and the African Palliative Care Association, and she is grateful to the patients, caregivers, health facilities and health professionals who took part in the pilot testing and whose feedback continues to shape the platform.