Med School’s Levine Works to Build Health Care Bridges Across the Globe

By Jason Hollander

While most are fatigued at the end of the 13-hour flight from New York to Ghana, Brian Levine (GSAS ’03 and MED ’08) was full of energy when he arrived in the capital city of Accra last fall. Funded by the School of Medicine’s International Health Program, Levine was there to promote a new Web site he conceived to help doctors in the West African country and their counterparts in the U.S. better understand each other’s health care culture. Unfortunately, Levine quickly discovered that the sluggish Internet connections and scarcity of computers in Ghana rendered his site nearly useless.  

      Though dejected, the Babylon, Long Island native didn’t give up on his goal to help improve Ghana’s medical communications. After three weeks of living in a cheap hotel and networking with local physicians, Levine had an “Aha!” moment.

      “I noticed that in Ghana even if you don’t have running water, you have a cell phone,” says Levine. “And because their cellular system is based on second generation technology, they get even better reception than we do in the U.S.”

      The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones there offered the 28-year-old a perfect opportunity to link health care providers, even in the country’s most remote regions. He drew up a plan and convinced the CEO of Onetouch (Ghana Telecom) to provide a unified, unlimited, free cellular system to all 2,000 doctors in the country so they could discuss patients, health news, and other topics. Within three months, over 75 percent of doctors had signed up and made more than 1,000,000 phone calls to each other on what is now called “Medicareline.”

      “The cost is minimal and the benefit is huge,” says Levine. “If doctors are talking, health care has to improve.”

      Levine’s work is consistent with a passion for international health care that developed in his youth. He spent summers as a child taking science courses, backpacking in Europe, and studying archeology in Colorado. While many of his fellow undergraduates at Cornell were out partying, he became a critical care EMT in his spare time. He earned a master’s in biology at NYU before going to medical school to pursue obstetrics and gynecology, specializing in the molecular mechanisms underlying pregnancy. This July, he begins a residency at Columbia University’s New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

      Levine’s affinity for research is matched by a desire to use his skills for “big picture” aid, which made him a natural choice for the inaugural class of Fellows in NYU’s Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship. Inspired by his work as a Fellow, Levine recently put together a team of NYU professors to help develop his idea for “SmartTrack,” a cell phone-based drug distribution information system that can be used for tracking the flow and consumption of AIDS drugs in Ghana; SmartTrack recently won a $100,000 grant from Microsoft Research to further develop this system.

      “If this technology proves useful, it could become the standard for patient treatment around the world,” says Levine, who aspires to live abroad someday in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. “I want to work in societies where I can make a difference. I want to be part of their structural change.”