Future 50: Vula Medical makes specialist knowledge travel

A preventable case of blindness inspired Dr William Mapham to build a platform connecting frontline health workers with specialists when their patients need them most. As a young doctor working at a rural hospital in the Eastern Cape, Dr William Mapham encountered a patient with an eye condition he could not identify. With limited specialist support available, Mapham wrote a referral letter and sent the patient to a distant eye clinic. Seven years later, Mapham returned to the area as a trained eye specialist. The same patient appeared, still carrying the same referral letter. By then, he was blind in that eye. The tragedy was that the condition had been relatively simple to treat. The hospital had even stocked the medicine required. What had been missing was access to the right specialist knowledge at the right moment. That experience led Mapham to create Vula Medical.