It was a great pleasure to visit Proximie’s headquarters in London this week to advance the partnership that the Wellbeing Foundation Africa and Proximie Global Health formalised through our Memorandum of Understanding at the 79th WHO World Health Assembly in Geneva, under the auspices of the Health Innovation Exchange and with the support of Amazon Web Services.

Proximie was founded on Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram’s vision of a borderless operating room, a vision celebrated on the cover of WIRED that now connects clinicians across more than 50 countries, and it holds particular promise for Nigeria, where the quality of care a patient receives so often rests on the skills and confidence of the health worker beside them. Our partnership aspires to widen digital training access, beginning with obstetrics and gynaecology and the Wellbeing Foundation Africa’s emergency obstetric and newborn care training, and extending in time across surgical training more broadly, so that midwives, nurses, doctors and surgeons may practise life-saving skills through simulation, learn from expert mentors wherever they may be, and remain connected to colleagues far beyond their own facilities.

Our conversation explored how Proximie in Nigeria might grow across the country and the continent as a beacon of digital health training, creating opportunities for every clinician it reaches and bringing the predictability, certainty and clarity that health workers, hospital leaders and partners need to deliver care with confidence. I remain deeply grateful to Amazon Web Services for enabling this important work.

My sincere thanks to Dr Shannon Shibata-Germanos, Head of Global Health, Bryn Davies, Senior Global Health Advisor, Oleg Bodiul, Chief Financial Officer, and Richard Carter, Chief Technology Officer, for their warm welcome, and to Dr Nadine and the entire Proximie team for their partnership and vision.