The Botswana Pharmacy development team members, Isaac Perrilles, Alex Kozakowski, and Alex Schmertmann pose for a portrait in Java House in downtown Iowa City on Friday, February 21st, 2020. Team member, Travis Geisler is not present.
Riley Davis, The Daily Iowan
A University of Iowa Information Systems capstone project has connected students with a Mandela Washington fellow to create an application to help his Botswana-based pharmacy and spark the possibility of benefiting the entire country’s public health.
The project began in spring 2019 when the first “phase” of students involved spoke with 2018 Mandela Washington fellow Rapula Otukile about his pharmacy’s needs and the problems it was facing, said Carli Strathman, a member of the project’s phase-two group.
Strathman said that Otukile voiced his need for an affordable, inventory-track management system that was able to specify when shipments came in, when they were dispensed, and if expired shipments needed to be thrown out. Based on his requests, she said, the first-phase group created a portion of the application’s code before handing the project off to the second-phase group at the end of the spring 2019 semester.