Doctor On Call (literally)

Dr Erin Jones spotted a critical gap in South Africa’s healthcare system early on in the pandemic. So she set about filling it and, in the process, shifted the possibilities for medical care in this country.

- Shireen Fisher

Dr Erin Jones isn’t your regular medical doctor. The 33-year-old founder of The Health Hopper, an innovative medical startup that merges old methods with new technology, is part of a new breed of ‘doctorpreneurs’ changing the way in which medical care is administered.

After graduating from Stellenbosch University in 2012, Erin started her medical career at Pietermaritzburg Complex. It was working in a rural town, she says, that shaped her into the kind of doctor she wanted to be. ‘I saw rural KwaZulu-Natal and the plight of the people there. After that, I did my community service at Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria, eventually moving on to emergency medicine, which I loved so much I did my diploma in primary emergency care. When I moved into private work in Sandton in 2016, I noticed that patients there really wanted a type of personalised care – and that was quite refreshing, coming from a state hospital. All these things affected what I finally did.’

After doing several locums and gaining experience in different areas, Erin realised she didn’t want to specialise and decided, instead, to take a position in the medical unit of a cruise liner. She soon worked herself into the post of senior doctor, sailing in the Gulf of Mexico and The Bahamas, among other places. She had initially found coming from Africa and going into US national medicine quite daunting, but was relieved to discover that First World medicine was not that different.

‘It was also a type of concierge medicine, where you go out to the patients in their cabins. Because it’s a floating hotel, we would see patients either in the medical unit, in their rooms or at the restaurant. It was mobile medicine, but on a ship – and that turned out to be the thought process behind things to come.’