I build the systems health programmes run on.
I'm Dr. Ismail Mbabali, a Kampala-based physician with a Johns Hopkins MPH in epidemiology and biostatistics and 12+ years in HIV, TB and child health. I have led programmes and donor portfolios, designed the monitoring, evaluation and verification instruments that judge them, and built the data systems they report through. With Claude Code I now also ship the software: mobile apps, operations platforms and websites for real clients.
10 live projects. Built without a software engineering degree.
From the clinic to the systems behind health programmes.
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2011 – 2014
Clinician
Intern medical officer at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital, then medical officer in Rakai, where I set up four ART clinics in underserved, high-burden areas. As ART coordinator I led the handover of HIV services to district government across eight clinics serving 20,909 patients.
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2014 – 2017
Epidemiologist and researcher
MPH in epidemiology and biostatistics at Johns Hopkins as a Fogarty Fellow. Back in Rakai I led the mLAKE trial and the EMAI study with 800+ participants in 15 fishing communities, designed their smartphone data app and real-time dashboard, and co-first-authored three papers, including in PLoS Medicine.
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2015 – 2020
Programme leader
Started and scaled DREAMS across seven districts for 40,000 adolescent girls, where an Access database I built became Uganda's national DREAMS and OVC Tracking System. Then turned around an underperforming DREAMS programme in Lango for JSI.
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2020 – 2025
Strategic information and portfolio lead
Redesigned the national OVC information system with the Ministry of Health, raising data completeness from 65% to 92% for 250,000+ children. At USAID I steered a $39M HIV/TB portfolio across 112 districts and updated national PrEP guidance to include CAB-LA.
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2026
Verification and evaluation
Independent verification of hospital results for performance-based grants, first with PwC and then directly for JSI; monitoring and evaluation expert on a fiduciary risk assessment of government health entities; and a baseline and an endline evaluation.
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Today
Builder
With Claude Code I build what programmes and businesses run on: a SACCO app on the App Store and Google Play, waste-management platforms running on real customer records, a mobile-money payments app and websites. Every project ships from concept to deployment.
Real applications, real users, real impact.
Every project below was built with Claude Code — by a physician with no formal software engineering training.
Money Hive — SACCO Management App
A bookkeeping and record-keeping app for SACCOs, Chamas, and savings groups. Contribution tracking, loan ledger, fine management, member dashboards, admin tools, multi-group support, and PDF reports. Built for East Africa with support for UGX, KES, TZS, RWF, NGN, and GHS.
Bin Better
Staff platform and public website for a property waste-management company in Kampala. Field officers register each premise with photographs and GPS, every premise carries a printed QR label, and managers track collections, payments and arrears against an audit trail.
IGES Waste Services
A waste-management platform for a company serving five parishes and 36 zones of Rubaga South Division. Field officers register premises with photographs, GPS and a QR label, collections and payments are recorded against each premise, and the office tracks arrears with a full audit trail. Parish-aware customer codes and a zone finder for residents.
Buyonjo
Customers of waste-collection companies pay what they owe from their phone. They pick their company, enter a client ID or phone number, and approve a mobile-money prompt. No customer account is needed, and payments settle straight to each company's own merchant account.
Trace Core Africa
Website for a Kampala company that supplies tax stamp security, product authentication and supply-chain traceability to revenue authorities, ministries and security printers. Every statement on the site traces to a company document, and every image carries a recorded licence.
Kibuli Secondary School
A rebuild of the public website for Kibuli Secondary School, Kampala: nine public pages and a twelve-role portal demonstration, 74 pages in all. Every school fact on the site is drawn from three official school documents.
Modern Charm Personalised E-Invites
A digital invitation product for an events company. Each guest gets a private link whose WhatsApp preview carries their own name and seat allowance. Hosts follow replies on a live RSVP board, and door staff scan QR passes on the day.
A Widow's Way Forward
Mobile app for a UK-based community interest company supporting widows globally. Seven pillars of support, expert session booking, healing playlists, donation campaigns, multi-role authentication, and internationalization in 4 languages.
Modern Charm Uganda
Full-featured website for a premier event styling and management company. Portfolio galleries, blog, testimonials, service pages, and WhatsApp integration.
Ruhita Finance
Complete business website for a financial services company. Loan application system, admin dashboard, product catalog, FAQ engine — branding to full-stack implementation.
AIPDN — African Inter-Party Dialogue Network
Full-stack website for a pan-African peacebuilding organization. News articles, event listings, 78-photo gallery with lightbox, partner directories, M-Pesa donation flow, and three Supabase-powered forms. Replaces legacy WordPress site.
Money Hive — SACCO Management App
Featured ProjectA bookkeeping and record-keeping app for SACCOs, Chamas, and savings groups. Contribution tracking, loan ledger, fine management, member dashboards, admin tools, multi-group support, profit distribution, and PDF reports. Built for East Africa with support for UGX, KES, TZS, RWF, NGN, and GHS. Built from scratch by a physician with zero software engineering training, using Claude Code. Available on the App Store and Google Play.
Bin Better: Waste Management Platform
Live PlatformA public website and a staff-only platform for a property waste-management company in Mbuya, Kampala. Field officers register premises with photographs and GPS and print a QR label for each one. Collections and payments are recorded against that label, and managers watch arrears on charts and a map, with every change kept in an audit trail. Built with Claude Code on Next.js 16 and Supabase, and running on real customer records.
IGES Waste Services: Waste Management Platform
Live PlatformForked from Bin Better and rebuilt for a five-parish operation in Rubaga South Division, Kampala, where two zones can share a name across parishes. Parishes became their own table, customer codes carry the parish, and residents find their zone by parish. The office's paper client register was keyed into the platform and checked row by row. Built with Claude Code.
Buyonjo: Mobile-Money Bill Payments
BetaA bridge between waste-collection customers and the companies that serve them. A customer picks their company, types a client ID or phone number, sees what they owe and approves a mobile-money prompt with their PIN, with no account to create. Companies subscribe to be listed and connect their own MTN or Airtel merchant account, so the money settles straight to them and Buyonjo never holds customer funds. The Android and iOS apps wrap the same web app. Built with Claude Code, with payments in operator sandbox testing ahead of launch.
Trace Core Africa: Security and Traceability
Live SiteA credibility site for a company incorporated in Uganda in 2025 that supplies tax stamp security, product authentication, supply-chain traceability and security consumables to revenue authorities, ministries and security printers. The rebuild replaced a WordPress template with a statically generated site that publishes only what the company's own documents state, records a licence for every image, and keeps all content in Markdown and YAML files. Built with Claude Code on Next.js 16.
Kibuli Secondary School: Website Rebuild
PreviewA statically generated rebuild of the public website for a Kampala secondary school founded in 1945: about, academics, student life, admissions, community, staff and contact pages, plus a portal demonstration for twelve roles. Every school fact lives in one content file sourced from three official school documents. Built with Claude Code on Next.js 16.
Modern Charm Personalised E-Invites
Live ProductA multi-tenant invitation product added to the Modern Charm site, with the project's first database. Each guest receives a private link, and because the guest's code sits in the link path, the WhatsApp preview shows that guest's own name and seat allowance. Guests open a sealed envelope, reply in a few taps and receive a QR entry pass. Hosts watch a live RSVP board, and door staff scan each pass on the day. Guest data sits behind row-level security and hashed tokens. Built with Claude Code.
A Widow's Way Forward
In DevelopmentA mobile app for a UK-based community interest company supporting widows globally. Seven pillars of support, expert session booking, healing music playlists, donation campaigns with Gift Aid, annual surveys, multi-role authentication, and internationalization in 4 languages. Built from scratch by a physician with zero software engineering training, using Claude Code.
Ruhita Finance — Lending Platform
Live SiteA complete digital lending platform — loan applications, multi-step forms, admin dashboard, product catalog, FAQ engine, and customer management. Built with Claude Code from branding to full-stack deployment.
AIPDN — African Inter-Party Dialogue Network
Live SiteA full-stack website for a pan-African peacebuilding organization. News articles, event listings, 78-photo gallery with lightbox, partner directories, publications library, team profiles, M-Pesa donation flow, and three Supabase-powered forms. Replaces a legacy WordPress site. Built with Claude Code on Next.js 16.
Modern Charm — Event Styling & Management
Live SiteA premium event management website — portfolio galleries, service showcases, blog, testimonials, contact booking, and WhatsApp integration. Built with Claude Code for a Ugandan event styling company.
The engines behind the numbers.
The instruments I design and the systems they work with, across five recent assignments. Client data stays with the client; what follows describes the instruments and the method.
Verifying hospital results for performance-based grants, quarter three
Health commitment grant payments to 17 regional referral hospitals are released against verified performance. For the April to June 2026 quarter, contracted directly by JSI, I rebuilt the verification on KoboToolbox with a live dashboard.
A KoboToolbox XLSForm that carries each hospital's reported figures inside the form, so every field team compares reported against verified values on the spot, samples records and logs discrepancies as it goes.
- 1,833 form controls
- 1,218 built-in calculations
- 27 indicator codes
- 88 reported values pre-loaded per hospital
- 136 record-sampling cells
- 148 reported-versus-verified comparisons
One Power BI project that reads KoboToolbox at every refresh, so the figures move as verification teams submit. The model, its measures and every page are generated from code, and the build refuses any visual that points at a field the model does not define.
- 14 report pages
- 96 DAX measures
- 10 tables refreshed live from the KoboToolbox API
- 15 reference tables from the payment instrument
What we did
- Assessed the supporting documents every one of the 17 hospitals submitted for the quarter
- Connected the form to a live Power BI dashboard whose figures update as the verification teams key their records
- Produced the indicator verification tables, narrative reports, payment summary and a presentation for the funder, with supporting documents redacted
Verifying hospital performance before a donor pays for it
Grant payments to 17 regional referral hospitals are released against each hospital's reported performance. I led the strategic information work behind the independent verification of whether each hospital's records could prove what it had reported.
A Qualtrics instrument covering all 26 payment-linked indicators, paired with reported-versus-verified indicator tables, a dashboard and charts: one consistent, auditable basis for judging every hospital.
- 492 questions
- 26 payment-linked indicators
- 17 hospitals
- 5 days on site per hospital
What we did
- Paired a desk review of national-system data with five-day on-site checks of registers and patient files at each hospital
- Re-ran the verification over a second quarter with a new referral-mapping indicator, adding hospital-level integrity audits that caught data errors before results reached the client
- Co-authored the quarterly report, which the client adopted as the deliverable of record
Testing whether government health entities are ready for direct funding
A move to government-to-government financing depends on whether ministries, medical stores, hospitals and district governments can receive funds on-budget and prove the milestones that release payment. I served as Monitoring and Evaluation Expert on the assessment.
A fiduciary tool and an operational tool for each of five entity types, tailored to recurring weaknesses mined from prior audits, with a coded risk ID for every question and ratings on the national 4 × 4 risk matrix.
- 5 entity types
- 2 tool families: fiduciary and operational
- 6 fiduciary areas
- 4 × 4 national risk matrix
What we did
- Owned daily data quality assurance across the national field deployment, checking every team's evidence against source documents in real time
- Tested whether each entity's data and reporting systems could track and prove payment milestones
- Carried the findings into a Kampala stakeholder workshop, where the funder and the government agreed the mitigation priorities to fix before funds flow
A reproducible baseline pipeline for HIV prevention among adolescent girls and young women
A national HIV-prevention plan for adolescent girls and young women needed a baseline in two districts, each described on its own, with health facilities shown by level and schools by primary, secondary and tertiary.
A pipeline that tabulates the raw survey exports, validates them, and feeds one report per district and a dashboard with a tab per district. Every figure shows its base n, and the readiness scorecard is labelled as a construct: the mean of named, computed indicators.
- 4 survey tools: community, district, health facility, school
- 21 focus-group and key-informant transcripts
- 2 district reports
- 0 mismatches when the dashboard recomputes
What we did
- Built the tabulation engine, data layer, charts and infographics as scripts, so every figure traces to the raw exports
- Designed the readiness scorecard, by-level heatmaps and service cascade for each district
- Delivered two district reports and a district-tab dashboard whose live-analysis sheet recomputes its figures
Endline analysis for a UN Peacebuilding Fund project on young women's political participation
A project supporting young women leaders in Juba, Wau and Yambio needed its endline survey analysed and consolidated into a UN-standard end-of-project evaluation report, working with the lead evaluation consultant.
An engine that reads the two survey exports, runs its own consistency checks and writes every result to one file, from which the report, its figures and a companion workbook are generated. Every chart stays editable in Word.
- 2 surveys: young women leaders and stakeholders
- 3 locations
- 44 report pages
- 41 native, editable figures
What we did
- Matched survey results to the project's logframe indicators against baseline values and targets
- Analysed the two datasets separately, by location and stakeholder group, and protected respondents' confidentiality
- Delivered the evaluation report in the UN register, with a reproducibility check that re-derived the annex figures from the raw data
12+ years building systems across Uganda's health sector.
From clinical medicine to national-scale program management — my career has been about designing systems that work for real people. That same approach drives everything I build in tech.
Master of Public Health (MPH)
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health — Epidemiology & Biostatistics. Fogarty Fellow, Certificate in Health Finance & Management.
Bachelor of Medicine & Surgery (MBChB)
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. One of Africa's premier medical schools.
PwC Uganda
Public Health, Monitoring & Evaluation Expert (Consultant). Independent verification of donor-funded hospital performance data, and fiduciary and operational risk assessment of government health entities.
USAID / Uganda
Project Management Specialist — Led $39M HIV/TB portfolio across 112 districts. Pioneered digital health solutions adopted as national standards.
USAID QED Learning Activity
PEPFAR Strategic Information Specialist — Directed national health information system redesign serving 250,000+ children.
DREAMS Program Manager
JSI / RHITES-N, Lango — Led program turnaround across 8 districts. Designed M&E systems scaled nationally to 18 districts.
Rakai Health Sciences Program
Deputy Program Manager & Study Coordinator — 6-year tenure spanning program management, clinical research, and health systems strengthening.
Institutional Networks
10 peer-reviewed publications.
Khalifa A, Beres LK, Anok A, , et al. Leveraging ecological momentary assessment data to characterize individual mobility: Exploratory pilot study in rural Uganda. JMIR Formative Research. 2024;8:e54207. PubMed
Nishimura H, Kaptchuk RP, , et al. Motivational interviewing experiences from a community health worker-led HIV prevention and care intervention in rural Uganda. AIDS Care. 2024;36(4):491-499. PubMed
Chang LW, Pollard R, , et al. Mixed methods, implementation science evaluation of a community health worker strategy for HIV service engagement in Uganda. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2023;94(1):28-36. PubMed
Beres LK, , Anok A, et al. Acceptability and feasibility of mobile phone-based ecological momentary assessment and intervention in Uganda. PLoS One. 2022;17(8):e0273228. PubMed
Edwards AJ, Pollard R, Kennedy CE, Mulamba J, , et al. Impact of community health worker intervention on PrEP knowledge and use in Rakai, Uganda. Int J STD AIDS. 2022;33(11):995-1004. PubMed
Pollard R, Kennedy CE, Hutton HE, Mulamba J, , et al. HIV prevention and treatment behavior change and the sIMB model: A qualitative evaluation in Rakai, Uganda. AIDS and Behavior. 2022;26(2):375-384. PubMed
Beres LK, , Anok A, et al. Mobile ecological momentary assessment and intervention and health behavior change among adults in Rakai, Uganda. JMIR Formative Research. 2021;5(7):e22693. PubMed
Chang LW, , Hutton H, et al. Novel community health worker strategy for HIV service engagement in a hyperendemic community in Rakai, Uganda: A pragmatic, cluster-randomized trial. PLoS Medicine. 2021;18(1):e1003475. PubMed
Chang LW, , Kong X, et al. Impact of a community health worker HIV treatment and prevention intervention in Rakai, Uganda (mLAKE): Study protocol. Trials. 2017;18(1):494. PubMed
Long A, , Hutton HE, et al. Design and implementation of a community health worker HIV treatment and prevention intervention in Rakai, Uganda. J Int Assoc Provid AIDS Care. 2017;16(5):499-505. PubMed