Google develops an ‘Ebola-proof’ tablet for health workers at high-risk zones in Sierra Leone

Doctors fighting Ebola in West Africa need to take a lot of precautions to stay safe, including wearing full-body suits and masks. They are also required to forgo their gadgets in favor of pen and paper to record patient details. Now however Google, on behalf of French organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), has developed a tablet specially for this hazardous conditions, Wired reports.

Speaking to the publication, Dr Jay Achar talks about how there was a need for a more efficient way of maintaining patient records in high-risk medical facilities like the one in the city of Magburaka. They approached developers at Google.org (Google’s charitable branch), and they responded by creating a tablet that can survive the treacherous conditions.

The tablet in question is encased in polycarbonate, and most importantly can be soaked in chlorine for decontamination. Doctors working in such high-risk zones have to undergo such sanitization process every day before moving outside high-risk zones. The tablet communicates with battery-powered servers located outside the high-risk zones, which store patient records.

While this tablet has been made Ebola fighters in Sierra Leone, it could also be useful during future disease outbreaks. With this in mind, Eric D. Perakslis, a doctor at Harvard Medical School, is working towards opening the tablet’s technology to others, so developers will be able to modify it for particular diseases.