After reviewing more than 550 submissions, COVIDaction has announced 9 winners in response to its Resilient Health Systems Call. The call was funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO, formerly DFID) through its COVIDaction initiative and led by Results for Development (R4D).
The Resilient Health Systems Call sought innovations focused on supporting countries to continue delivery of essential health services (e.g., maternal and child health, noncommunicable diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc.), which are facing major disruptions as a result of the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, with decades of progress threatened.
Gina Lagomarsino, R4D’s president and CEO, said: “As the world battles COVID, it has been such a ray of light to see so many innovative ideas for maintaining essential services despite serious current challenges. The COVIDaction initiative highlights the potential for health systems to innovate and come out even stronger after the pandemic.”
R4D supported FCDO in shaping the Open Call for Innovations by talking to health systems experts and change agents about the kind of support countries in Africa and South Asia need in the midst of the pandemic. Together, we circulated the call widely. Applicants shared technology and innovations to respond to the two call themes: 1) changing the delivery models of health services to extend the reach and continuity of support from hospitals and clinics to households and communities, and 2) improving the collection and use of data, reducing fragmentation, and integrating data systems.
The R4D team also led a three-round judging process with health systems and digital health experts to narrow the list of awardees and select finalists, and then worked with FCDO experts to review and select grantees.
In addition to providing financial support, COVIDaction is also supporting these organizations and partnerships with technical assistance, including networking and profile-raising, and cross-innovation peer learning. As COVIDaction kicks off one-year demonstration projects with each of the grantees, additional packages of technical assistance will be defined, including business model support and sustainability planning, technology development support, ecosystem connections, and so on. We are also launching an adaptive learning process to document lessons on scaling and integration of health care innovations.
Annette Ozaltin, an R4D senior fellow who managed the open call, said: “The COVIDaction team is very grateful to FCDO for the opportunity to lead this call, recognizing the importance of strengthening health systems and emphasizing the maintenance of essential health services while so much attention is on the direct response to COVID-19. We are also grateful to FCDO for expanding the funding envelope to support many more grantees at a more generous level than originally planned.”
She added: “We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the health systems and digital health experts who helped us through the review process of all the submissions, and whose feedback was instrumental in selecting the finalists. We were so inspired by the many great innovations submitted to the call. There is a strong community of innovators supporting countries to build resilient health systems through the pandemic and beyond, and we are eager to continue to learn from their efforts.”
The nine grantees include:
Concern Worldwide, Digital Healthcare Solutions, mPower & SAJIDA Foundation
This multisectoral partnership is establishing a platform for local pharmacy owners in Bangladesh to connect end beneficiaries with primary healthcare doctors using pharmacy logistics as a local telemedicine hub. The partners will be increasing access to quality health services for the most disadvantaged, leveraging and integrating their e-learning application for rural health workers, mCare, and their consumer application for remote doctor consultations, Digital Hospital (formerly TONIC).
Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University
The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Uganda is assuring continuity of quality care through their Digital Prevention, Care and Treatment (D-PCT) innovation, which accelerates remotely accessible health services for people living with HIV and tuberculosis. IDI is deploying its interactive voice response tool (Call for Life) and pharmacy refill app (ARTAccess) in clinics and pharmacies to address overcrowded health facilities, healthcare worker shortages, and problems with access to medicines due to gaps in supply chain systems and infrastructure.
Kenya Healthcare Federation, Amref Health Africa, & Partners
This strategic partnership was formed in direct response to pandemic restrictions imposed by the Government of Kenya, and is composed of the Kenya Healthcare Federation, Amref Health Africa, Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Nairobi Metropolitan Health Department, Bolt, rescue.co, TeleSky, and the University of Nairobi. The partners’ Wheels for Life innovation provides teleconsultations to pregnant women and taxi or ambulance services for pregnancy-related emergencies and tackling transport challenges.
mDoc Healthcare is a digital health social enterprise, based in Nigeria, that leverages Quality Improvement, behavioural science, and digital technology to reduce the chronic disease burden in Africa. mDoc’s innovation, CompleteHealth, offers integrated care support to people with chronic health needs by providing self-management techniques digitally and in-person, while also helping health care providers to deliver evidence-based care. mDoc is prioritizing technology augmentation and testing to strengthen its platform to provide self-care support for low-income users.
GBCHealth and Greenmash are working with the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) project to roll out Mango in the Sahel, a mobile application platform to improve commodity tracking, reduce stock-outs, and enhance timely data essential in managing outbreaks, treatments, and health education. Their partnership is focused on increasing access to commodities while bringing efficiencies to supply chain management, which directly relates to one of SWEDD’s priority interventions: reinforcing the regional availability of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition (RMNCHN) commodities and qualified health workers.
Living Goods is partnering with the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH) and other stakeholders to select, develop, and implement an Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS). The eCHIS is part of the MOH’s broader agenda to establish a robust, interoperable end to end health information system, resolving challenges of fragmented data and suboptimal data use and exchange of information from communities and health facilities, to county and national levels. The eCHIS will feed quality, timely data from the community up to the national level, fitting into the defined national health system architecture.
Medical Teams International & Shifo Foundation
The partners are integrating Smart Paper Technology (SPT) in health facilities in refugee-hosting districts in Uganda. SPT is a simple solution (hybrid paper-digital) that counts uncounted women and children, reduces health workers’ time doing administrative tasks, generates accurate programmatic and supply chain data, improves governance and accountability at all levels, and promotes cost-effective, sustainable and appropriate solutions. Medical Teams International & Shifo Foundation are working with the Government of Uganda to ultimately scale SPT across Uganda, and eventually other refugee-hosting countries.
Source Code’s mHealth platform, PENSA *660#, is a free multi-channel and bi-directional platform that runs on all mobile network operators in Mozambique and is designed to distribute health information and services to all Mozambicans, including those living in rural areas and using low-tech phones. Source Code is working with the Ministry of Health to ensure that policymakers and practitioners effectively engage with and take action on data collected from their citizenry, and is also working to augment the platform based on user requirements.
The Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in partnership with Premise, has developed ASSURE — Assessing Signals and SUpporting REsilience. ASSURE is a health system risk monitoring and evaluation system. The system uses digital and statistical tools to spot early warning signals of confidence losses in health systems or interventions, geolocates misinformation, and forecasts uptake rates of routine immunisation and a potential COVID-19 vaccine. Their project in Nigeria, with technical support from the Africa CDC and Africa Union, confronts potential long-term impacts of COVID-19 exacerbating loss of confidence in health systems, driven by fear, distrust, misinformation, or negative experiences.
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About COVIDaction
COVIDaction, a partnership between UKAid, UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Global Disability Innovation Hub, alongside others, is building a technology and innovation pipeline to support action related to the COVID-19 pandemic across different thematic areas. COVIDaction is managed by the Frontier Technologies Hub, which works with the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) at the intersection of tech, innovation, and international development. The Frontier Technologies Hub is managed by three partners: Results for Development, IMC Worldwide and Brink. Learn more: https://medium.com/covidaction.
About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too. For more information, visit our website at: www.r4d.org.
Photo © USAID in Africa
