Medical referral platform named SA’s best app

The evolution of African app development was on full display in Johannesburg last week as the FNB App of the Year Awards returned with a showcase that underscored how local developers are solving real-world problems. From health to agriculture to transport, the event reflected a maturing ecosystem that is no longer chasing novelty, but targeting system-level gaps with practical digital tools.

This year’s top honour went to Vula Medical, a referral platform conceived by Dr William Mapham after working in a rural Swaziland eye clinic and seeing how frontline health workers battled to reach specialists. Instead of building another telemedicine app chasing video calls and dashboards, Vula focuses on the bottlenecks that slow care: unclear referrals, limited specialist access, and patients forced into long, expensive trips for information that could be exchanged within minutes.

The app lets nurses and clinicians send structured referral notes and images to specialists across disciplines, giving experts the context they need to advise remotely. It has already processed more than 2.5-million referrals across 2,300 facilities, and covers over 100 types of healthcare professionals. Studies from health workers using the platform show that nearly a third of patients who would once have travelled for specialist consults no longer need to. The innovation lies less in the technology itself than in its understanding of African healthcare realities.

That same grounded approach defined many of the standout entries this year. Ellen Fischat, founder of Story Room and a long-time judge of the awards, says: “Developers are using AI in ways that fit local needs. The focus is not only on scale, but on whether people in communities can actually benefit from it.”

Immersion’s head of experience engineering, Gareth Tresling, described another visible shift: “We saw a surge in companion-style AI features, even in early form. The ambition is clear: integrate intelligence into everyday use cases, not as a gimmick, but as part of the service.”

The awards form one piece of a broader pipeline FNB has been building. This year, more than 33,000 young developers graduated from the bank’s App Academy, an intensive coding programme designed to push students from basic proficiency into full-stack capability. In October, FNB also staged what it says was Africa’s largest hackathon, where over 10,000 participants spent 7 hours tackling issues in safety, mobility, nutrition and education.

Across categories, the trend was unmistakable: developers are engineering for constraints rather than ignoring them. Jeff Manda, digital lead at Brave and fellow judge, said: “Some teams built deliberately for unreliable connectivity and limited resources. When solutions are shaped by the realities people face, the quality stands out.”

2025 category winners

• Best Consumer Solution: Mr D
• Best Enterprise Solution: Droppa
• Best Hackathon Solution: Usagey
• Best Gaming Solution: Recess
• Best Health Solution: Vula Medical
• Best Agricultural Solution: FarmWise
• Best Educational Solution: d6 School Communicator
• Breakthrough Developer of the Year: CPF Method
• Best Financial Solution: Stokvel Marketplace powered by StokFella
• Most Innovative Solution: iER
• Best South African Solution: iER
• Accenture Reinvention Award: Scenda