Tools

Global digital tools for health campaigns

Publication Date: July 2024

Revised.
Originally published: December 4, 2023

The Alliance for Malaria Prevention (AMP) made a request to digital service partners to describe their products and services available for the digitalization of health campaigns. They may be helpful for national malaria programmes and their implementing partners when they analyse their operational needs and context and make decisions on whether to digitalize their ITN mass campaigns. Contact information is provided for each of the digital service partners so that national malaria programmes and partners can follow up with questions directly. Digital service providers wishing to have their products and services available on the AMP website should contact allianceformalariaprevention@gmail.com.

While AMP has made every attempt to ensure that the information has been obtained from reliable sources, AMP is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. Reference to any specific product, process or service does not constitute or imply its indorsement or recommendation by AMP.

The following are the descriptions received. Please note they are ordered alphabetically.

The digital service providers

BLUESQUARE – IASO

Bluesquare was founded in 2012 to help governments and their partners digitalize public health services. By improving the scope, quality and efficiency of public services, Bluesquare’s technologies make quality performance data available to decision-makers and promote a more equitable and efficient allocation of healthcare resources in more than 30 countries (currently) impacting over 100 million people.

One of Bluesquare’s products, IASO, is a geo-enabled data collection and microplanning tool. It is an innovative open-source bilingual (EN/FR) data collection platform shaped by more than 25 real-world use cases. Unlocking the power of geo-structured data collection to plan, monitor and evaluate health programmes, it provides a solution towards data collection and validation. By providing an efficient and complete data collection and microplanning tool, IASO constitutes a building block in a national information ecosystem. With bidirectional integration and interoperability towards DHIS2, and features as Single Sign-On or Pyramid enhancement, Iaso aims to integrate campaign results and successes with your partner.

Data collection: IASO’s data collection mobile app can be customized and used to support surveys as well as routine data collection processes. The collected data then go through a validation phase before being allowed to enrich the general geo-registry.

Microplanning: IASO’s microplanning allows the planning, distribution and field teams to be managed in real time. Questionnaires can be assigned to interviewers or teams of interviewers as well as geographic areas to cover. Assignments are transmitted to the interviewers’ mobile app allowing them to start their fieldwork according to the priorities of the data managers.

Demo: Contact us.
Website: https://www.bluesquarehub.com/iaso/
Contact: Laure Pontis, lpontis@bluesquarehub.com

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CommCare

CommCare is one of the products of Dimagi, a global social enterprise that does impactful frontline work through scalable digital solutions and services. Their flagship product, CommCare, is used in over 130 countries across the globe to support over a million frontline workers serving over 400 million people through more than 3,000 projects. Drawing on its two-decade experience supporting governments and nonprofit organizations, Dimagi has developed the Integrated Campaign Solution – a comprehensive and adaptable set of digital tools designed to support various health campaigns. The solution works fully offline with features such as geo-location enabled enumeration; supply chain management with focus on stock-outs and stock reconciliation; campaign worker management with worker registration, payment and training attendance tracking; self-paced digital training; clinical case management for accurate diagnosis, treatment and follow-up; campaign delivery at community and facility levels; community engagement through SMS and chatbots; advanced reporting and analytics and integrations with national health systems such as DHIS2.

The solution offers a combination of mobile as well as web tools for frontline workers, M&E and programme managers. It is ready to deploy for teams who want to start data collection immediately or can be configured for local needs. Below is a list of the key features for campaign workflows. Each feature can be used on its own app or in combination with other features:

  • Target enumeration (GPS enabled)
  • Facility and community level distribution
  • Campaign worker management
  • Training management
  • Logistics and supply chain management
  • Digital Training

Demo: Introductory video
Website: www.dimagi.com
Email: partnerships@dimagi.com

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Crosscut

The Crosscut App helps users plan campaigns to prevent and treat malaria. Specifically, the Crosscut App allows the creation of accurate catchment area maps, which can then be used as a basis for estimating target populations and dwellings to help with campaign microplanning. The app can also visualize geographic accessibility, estimate populations within each catchment area, and plan supplies to support malaria campaigns. It is possible to register for an account in less than a minute and then use the application free of charge. The Crosscut app is also available directly within the DHIS2 App Hub, allowing the creation of catchment areas and population estimates for DHIS2 health sites. With geographic catchment area maps in place, the app can then be used to estimate the supplies needed to carry out a malaria indoor residual spraying (IRS) campaign. This year (2024), the ability to use catchment area maps to plan supplies and resources needed for an ITN distribution campaign will be added to the app. Where needed, the open-access technology can be directly incorporated into existing systems to streamline user access and sustainably incorporate the niche service in end-to-end processes and systems.

Demo: youtube.com/watch
Website link: https://crosscut.io
Contact details: Coite Manuel, coite@crosscut.io

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DHIS2

DHIS2 is a free, open-source software platform designed to support health information management from community to national level for a diverse range of interventions. DHIS2 is highly customizable and adaptable, used at a national scale by more than 60 Ministries of Health in addition to hundreds of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations. It offers modules for web-based and mobile data entry, data validation, data analysis, reporting and data visualization, allowing users to create customized dashboards, reports and maps to inform decision-making and resource allocation. DHIS2 is known for its flexibility, extensibility, scalability and community-driven development model, which encourages collaboration, innovation and the sharing of best practices among users globally.

For ITN, IRS and other health campaigns:

  • DHIS2 facilitates microplanning through advanced geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping features, integration of population denominators to establish sub-national targets and mobile apps to enumerate and geolocate households. These features improve precision targeting and identifying vulnerable populations to allocate resources effectively.
  • Throughout the campaign lifecycle, DHIS2 enables real-time monitoring of key performance indicators for delivery, households reached, stock and more with offline mobile data collection and automatically populated dashboards, allowing for timely interventions and adjustments at every level.
  • Post-campaign, DHIS2’s robust analytics features support evaluation of coverage and impact through triangulation across data sources, including routine data such as continuous ITN distribution (i.e. through such as antenatal clinics and immunization days) and reported malaria cases.
  • DHIS2 stands out for its robust, open and well-documented web application programming interface (API), allowing seamless integration with routine health information systems (HIS) as well as interoperability with other campaign digitalization tools like RapidPro and business intelligence tools like PowerBI.

Demo: https://demos.dhis2.org/hmis

Website: https://dhis2.org/
Contact: post@dhis2.org

DIGIT health campaign management (eGov)

DIGIT Health Campaign Management (DIGIT HCM) is a free, fit-for-purpose, open-source product that helps countries to expand capabilities in public health service delivery and transform their health campaigns. From setting-up campaigns quickly, to planning, inventory management, registrations, service delivery and real-time data dashboards, DIGIT HCM covers all elements required to run effective campaigns. The same product can be used for all campaign types across multiple diseases.

DIGIT HCM is built using modular building blocks that are highly configurable allowing countries to tailor the product to their specific needs, easily. These building blocks are reusable allowing for the creation of new solutions. Data reside in shared open registries enabling their reuse and establishing a single source of truth. Interoperability is baked into the design of DIGIT HCM allowing free flow of data across different systems. DIGIT HCM enables countries to set-up their own digital public infrastructure for health.

DIGIT HCM offers:

  • Single interface for managing all components in a campaign lifecycle
  • Allows reuse of assets across campaigns
  • Reduces fragmentation by supporting multiple diseases
  • Supports data interoperability with other health intervention areas (e.g. disease surveillance systems)
  • Improves sustainability by providing ownership and control to the government
  • Uses a modular and standards-based architecture

DIGIT HCM aims to achieve:

  • Increased campaign effectiveness (coverage)
  • Reduced time to respond to outbreaks (speed)
  • Improved efficiency (better utilization of available funding)
  • Increased transparency and accountability (reduce fraud)

Demo: Introductory Video
Website: https://health.digit.org/
Contact: Nita Tyagi (nita@egov.org.in)

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Novel-T

Novel-T is a Swiss company focusing on addressing public health challenges. It aims at generalizing technical solutions to make them applicable to different programmes.

The NT· (pronounced “antidot”) is a rugged electronic device specifically designed to address some of the limitations of smartphones when used for the monitoring of public health interventions. It combines passive GPS tracking and active data collection. It features a high-contrast screen, a GPS chip, control buttons, a USB-C connector, Bluetooth and GSM cellular connectivity. The device can be used for one month on a single charge and can operate fully offline. The data collected by the device can be extracted by USB, uploaded online, or on a smartphone via Bluetooth. When used in passive mode, no training is required, which makes it easy to scale up. Despite the device being capable of standalone operation, it is also fully integrated with the online Geospatial Tracking System (GTS). The GTS system allows monitoring intervention delivery with reliable and timely insight into field activities. It works either with smartphones or NT· devices. Within an organization’s workspace, field activities can be configured and a geospatial microplan representing the areas targeted by your intervention can be uploaded. Using the data received from the devices, the GTS dashboard allows identification of service delivery gaps and course correction of interventions when teams are still in the field. The GTS is a generic tool that can be used to monitor all sorts of interventions such as vaccination campaigns, ITN distribution, mass drug administration (MDA) campaigns, supervisory visits, enumerations, etc.

Website: https://novel-t.ch/
Email: info@novel-t.ch

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ODK

ODK is a data collection platform that leading researchers, field teams and other professionals use to collect data that matter. In the last year, more than two million people across 193 countries have used ODK to send more than 250 million submissions. ODK is regularly chosen by national governments and implementing partners for large-scale surveillance and monitoring, immunization campaigns and clinical research. Recent examples:

  • ODK was used by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute to conduct clinical trials that showed the safety and efficacy of the RTS,S malaria vaccine.
  • WHO AFRO has used ODK to collect over 500 million data points for disease surveillance and immunization. AFRO cites ODK as the key technology that helped eradicate wild polio in Africa.
  • Uganda’s Ministry of Health conducted a measles-rubella and polio vaccination campaign reaching 19.5 million children. ODK enabled timely campaign feedback which led to fast corrective actions.

Key features include:

  • Powerful forms: Supports complex calculations, external datasets, barcode scans, on-device printing, multiple languages, and more.
  • Works offline: Use either the mobile or web app. Data are automatically synced when an Internet connection is found.
  • Easy analysis: Download data or connect apps like Excel, Power BI, Python, or R to create real-time dashboards.
  • Geospatial awareness: Add offline map layers, navigate between places, use map features in form logic.
  • Flexible workflows: Entities enable longitudinal data collection, case management, and other dynamic use cases.

ODK is 100 per cent open-source software made by a community of 13,000 ordinary people. It can be used on an organization’s own server or on ODK Cloud, the fully managed hosting service.

Demo: ODK – YouTube
Website: https://getodk.org/
Contact: email@getodk.org

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Ona

Ona develops proven technology solutions that support campaign and routine based service delivery globally.

Pixel – Pixel is a geospatial service that is designed to support non-technical users to use geospatial data to facilitate macro and micro level planning within their existing workflows. Pixel works by combining a wide variety of datasets into a uniform one kilometre grid of the world.  Each pixel contains information such as the population, number of buildings, malaria rate, distance to the nearest health facility, elevation, food security status etc. for that area. Pixel makes it easy to perform large scale, geospatial analysis, quickly in a browser without the need of any GIS expertise or software. Using Pixel, it is possible to:

  • Explore the data layers and use the in-browser draw tool to query data at lightning speed.
  • Point, polygon and buffer extraction – upload point or polygon data and Pixel will return the summarized data from Pixel for each feature. Pixel will also return the list of places e.g. facilities, schools, settlements that fall within that area.
  • Spatial joins – Pixel enables the ability to join high resolution (e.g. raster data) over a uniform geospatial grid. This unlocks the ability to conduct analysis like calculating the number of people that fall outside of 60 minutes of time.

https://geopixel.xyz/

Ona Data – Ona Data is a ODK compliant service that provides enterprise grade support for ODK based data collection campaigns. Ona Data is used as a corporate solution for organizations like UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP) and WHO for their campaign and survey work. Ona Data has been used to support very large-scale national campaigns for polio, measles, etc. across many countries. Ona Data powers the RT-VAMA solution (data improving vaccine distribution) by UNICEF.

OpenSRP 2 – OpenSRP 2 is an open-source digital health platform for frontline health workers at the community and facility level, with the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard. OpenSRP 2 has been adopted as the chosen national community health worker (CHW) platform in several countries where it is being used to serve over 95 million people. OpenSRP 2 has a geowidget that supports household structure selection and tasking support which makes it optimal for campaigns.

https://opensrp.io

Akuko – Ona Akuko is a no-code data visualization and analytics platform that makes it easy to develop robust map-centric data apps and dashboards. Akuko is currently being used to manage projects for WHO and UNICEF ranging from facility assessments to measles campaigns.

https://www.akuko.io

Website: https://ona.io
Email: biz@ona.io

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Reveal

Overview: Reveal is an open-source platform and Digital Global Good that enables the use of geospatial data and technology to efficiently and effectively deliver life-saving interventions. Campaign managers and field workers rely on Reveal’s detailed community and household-level maps, protocols and data-collection and analysis platforms to plan, navigate, deliver and adjust interventions so that they achieve the greatest impact.

Reveal, formerly known as mSpray, was conceptualized in 2010, and has since been developed alongside country governments and implementing partners to support public health interventions such as indoor residual spraying (IRS) for malaria, mass drug administration (MDA) for neglected tropical diseases, and routine childhood vaccination campaigns for vaccine-preventable diseases. Reveal has received significant attributions, including, most recently, a USAID Digi Award. Use of Reveal has increased health campaign coverages by 20—30 per cent. The reduction of disease burden through increased campaign coverage by that degree is powerful. In one trial, malaria cases dropped by 15 per cent more when IRS was supported with Reveal versus IRS alone. Reveal also creates significant cost savings per disease case averted. Without Reveal, the cost per malaria case averted was USD 118. With Reveal, that cost dropped by 63 per cent (to USD 44 per case averted).

Demo: Video
Website: revealprecision.com
Email: info@akros.com

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RedRose

RedRose is a leading technology provider in the fight against malaria and neglected diseases. With extensive experience running successful campaigns in multiple countries, RedRose is committed to improving public health outcomes globally. RedRose was set up in 2015 to support governments, donors, the UN and other humanitarian actors to provide better health and humanitarian programming. We support urban and rural communities in over 53 countries with sustainable solutions. Trusted by large institutional donors like the European Union, UK governments and USAID, RedRose has become a leading partner in providing global health systems and mass campaign management, with a particular focus on the fight against malaria and neglected diseases.

RedRose’s work in malaria control and neglected disease programmes
RedRose’s campaign experience includes delivery of ITNs, Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC)  and Onchocerciasis/River Blindness (Oncho) medicines. These campaigns have been successful in reducing the spread of malaria and river blindness in communities. In just a single year, RedRose completed 18 mass campaigns with 11 happening simultaneously, demonstrating its capacity to implement programmes at scale. Its real-time monitoring capabilities increase the coverage of intended recipients, enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of these campaigns, and ultimately improve public health outcomes in the communities served.

The RedRose solution – a fully integrated approach
The system’s implementation models are highly configurable, allowing for tailored approaches to meet the specific needs of communities. This flexibility ensures that the programmes are effective and adaptable to context over the long term. The system offers features that allow nearly all operations to be managed in one place. These include:

  • Registration of recipients
  • Distribution of intervention items
  • Stock management
  • Personnel management
  • Remote monitoring through dashboards
  • Customized reports
  • Integration with data analytics tools (e.g. PowerBI)
  • Integration with outcome data repositories (e.g. DHIS2)
  • Offline campaign implementation capability
  • Monitoring data collection

The system’s implementation models are highly configurable, allowing for tailored approaches to meet the specific needs of communities. The solution also works “out of the box” for the most common interventions, such as ITNs and SMC, to ensure campaign timelines stay on track. This flexibility ensures that the programmes are effective and adaptable to context over the long term.

Demo: The LLIN Registrar/Distributor app experience
Website: www.redrose.io
Email: partnerships@redrose.io or brian@redrosecps.com

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