SCOPE CODA

A digital innovation to deliver health and nutrition interventions to the world’s most vulnerable people

To reduce maternal and child mortality requires an integrated set of health, nutrition, and education.  WFP believes SCOPE CODA may be an innovation that is could provide an underlying information system to register, track and manage health and nutrition services and programmes among young children and pregnant and lactating women in the world’s most challenging environments.  SCOPE CODA merges digital identity with programme management to track individual’s utilization health and nutrition services.  SCOPE CODA provides all end-users, from frontline health workers to managers, with a system to track and manage individuals to provide the best care possible and to raise a response when service uptake (both individual and aggregate) is below optimal.  The system seeks to ensure pregnant women receive an optimal number of ante-natal care services, that children receive their full vaccination, and nutritional status is monitored and treated accordingly. 

SCOPE CODA uses interlocking devices at the health point and patient cards to monitor and record health status, services and goods provided.  In this way, the patient has a complete, yet confidential record of their health, while the frontline worker can access the patients electronic medical records through an easy to use and read android device.  At the same time, once the device syncs, the information is analysed and available to managers, ministry officials and other national and global stakeholders, ultimately supporting programme improvement and more effective planning and resource allocation. 

WFP’s technical expertise in the development, deployment and management of technology in the world’s most challenging environment; WFP, as the IT cluster lead, is the lead support provider for IT services in all humanitarian disasters. WFP has the expertise and experience not only to develop and pilot such a solution, but to scale it across the world, particularly providing services in the world’s most challenging environments. 

Bringing a large scale electronic health system based on digital identity has the potential to revolutionize health and nutrition services, improve their information basis and provide essential information for improving system functioning.  Such a system has the potential to improve health and nutrition service delivery, increase uptake and reduce moribidity and mortality among the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Additionally, developing a digital identity through health services, which are almost universally utilized, could have an huge impact on supporting national civil registries.  Linking the two functions could support building a broad, legal identity for these persons, which can help to reduce marginalization and increase access to other secondary services (education, financial, employment, etc.).

SCOPE CODA merges digital identity management with programme management in a seamless programme that can used to manage essential health services for the world’s most vulnerable population.  While many programmes attempt to link individuals through unique identifiers, WFP’s system is able to record infant and young child biometrics to develop a digital identity, which is used to manage services and can be used to support birth and civil registry to develop a national foundational identity.

Technology allows us to move to solution to integrate health services and help to improve the delivery and monitoring of  health services among the world’s most vulnerable populations.  Technology helps us to both develop and verify an identity and then track this individual through the health service.  It helps us to develop analytics and systems for better targeting individuals who don’t receive their full set of interventions and then target these individuals.  Technology does not achieve all these objectives, rather it provides us with the means and information to build the systems, correct course, and strengthen the human capacity. 

WFP will scale up within presently operating countries—Uganda and Tajikistan—and then expand to at least three more countries.  We are working to improve the application and manage the change process from paper to digital solutions.  Improvement in the application include improved user interface and decision-making support, enhanced digital identity for infants and young children, improved functionality for the world’s most challenging locations, and improved analytics and accompanying management responses.  Changing from paper to digital solutions require change management frontline workers and supervision, including building faith in new system and a more responsive digital system. 

We will continue to grow and expand the system to other countries.  Expansion seeks to integrate other vertical programmes (HIV, TB, etc) and expand the ability to track and manage a more illnesses and diseases. 

Aside from expansion, we wish to further enhance the system to support national civil registries.  Building a broad legal identity provides a guarantee to rights and often access to other services (education, financial, etc.).  While birth registration is often low within developing countries, health cards are ubiquitous (estimated at over 95% worldwide).   This offers an opportunity for digital health identity to support civil registry.  

We work through international partnerships (UNICEF, WHO), NGOs and national governments to assess sites and support implementation of the devices and cards.  The areas selected reflect national and international priorities, often the worst affected and poorest areas.  The devices deployed at health clinics will allow patients to access and record their health and nutrition information on patient cards at point of service, providing frontline workers with complete health records and alerting them to persons in need of services.  

Presently, we are cover over 10,000 children under 5 and pregnant, lactating women in Aweil, South Sudan, another 6000 in Karamoja, Uganda, and 1000 children under 5 in Tajikistan.  These are the children who already receive services from the health clinics and have their records electronically recorded through the system.  The system helps both patients (through SMS and community health workers) and frontline workers to track and manage essential health services.   

Within the next 12 months, we expect to scale up from 36 health centers to 150 in Uganda and from 30 in Tajikistan to 230 health centers.  In addition, we wish to expand the system into at least 2 other countries.  Within 3 years, we expect  to scale up into other countries.  In addition, we believe that after 3 years, we will have expanded into supporting national civil registry and identity creation and WFP with partners will begin developing capacity strengthening with governments and local private service providers to support the nationalization of the system.

The team has a wide variety of skills that help us to not only attract different resources but also to work across multiple health, nutrition and technology partnerships.  We have individuals with experience in health and nutrition epidemiology, information systems and M&E to determine the information needs and improve programme management.  WFP’s innovation accelerator developed the technology and continues to improve its functionality.  Additionally, we have a dedicate sector for IT projects, which operate in over 80 countries, and has regional hubs.   This team has extensive experience in developing and operating IT systems in the world’s most challenging environments.

WFP is world’s largest humanitarian organization, and is dependent upon donor, both individuals and countries, for funding interventions, including SCOPE CODA.  To ensure that SCOPE CODA has the funding to continue operations, WFP has integrated it into the global strategy and global tool chest.  This means WFP will continue to provide financial support for development and updates to the system. But to continue the deployment and scale up of the system, WFP will work with donors and national governments to find solutions to funding and operations challenges, as part of the capacity strengthening initiative.  

While we do want and need financial support, we view the SOLVE relationship as a strong, mutually beneficial partnership to reach our shared goals.  WFP’s worldwide presence, organizational structure and unparalleled implementation experience can support large scale IT projects in the world’s most remote and challenging environments, which is exactly what is needed to make an impact on the health and nutrition of the world’s most vulnerable populations. 

Solve partners us with MIT’s unparalleled experience, working on improving our product.  Additionally, we seek to integrate ourselves within Solve’s network of private and public sector members to build potential relationships.

While funding is essential and we look for this, WFP is much more interested in building technical relationships with Solve, MIT and other technology providers to support the development the product.  WFP believe we have an incredible organizational structure and team for building and scaling up such interventions.  By building working technology relationships with technology developers can only help us to apply appropriate new technology and strengthen the technology/information products for international development.