HealthDataNetwork by ASADD

In many Central African and developing countries, the majority of primary health centers have limited or even non-existent data in the various medical services primary health data is only available in major cities and administrative services lack dedicated staff for data collection.

In Congo, in peri-urban and rural areas, there is 1 primary health care center of 25,000 people out of 10 in urban areas has a unit and data collection agents, but poorly qualified. Data collection operations suffer from global vision and objectives. The collection of primary health care data is not aimed at practical performance improvement, but rather to provide information primarily to donors.

Despite their fundamental role in primary health care settings, the insufficient availability of actionable primary health care information remains out of reach for its meaningful use for thousands of policy makers, health care providers, administrators and funders of funds.

Barriers such as poor quality and inconvenient actionable data, data collection burden borne by frontline health workers, low capacity of digital collection tools, and inconsistent feedback connectivity for data collectors, data, themselves prevent policy makers, health care providers, administrators and funders from measuring and optimizing the improvement in primary health care performance that is occurring in the country. 

HealthDataNetwork by ASADD is an effective and efficient core solution that leverages artificial intelligence and connectivity to record, collect, deliver and disseminate primary healthcare data to have relevant, quality, reliable information and easily usable in primary health care centers.

The purpose of this solution is to have health care data and an indispensable tool for the planning, management, monitoring and evaluation of health interventions in order to contribute to the improvement of the overall governance of the health system and to the strengthening of management capacities.

HealthDataNetwork by ASADD uses its network of agents to solve the problem of collecting primary health care data.

The network trains health center data collection and analysis officers in data collection and dissemination, so that improved measurement methods are provided and shareable across information systems and streamlined for data collectors , and the actionable insights are used in meaningful ways by healthcare providers, administrators and funders to optimize primary healthcare performance, while reducing the burden on healthcare providers.
This allows primary health care health centers to have reliable and quality data, especially in peri-urban and rural areas throughout the country.
Health care providers can optimize their patient care time and build health service capacity, from ground-level service delivery to strategic planning, and health data collectors can improve quality of their data to inform strategic performance decision-making.
This solution is better and complementary to existing methods through the assignment of qualified personnel dedicated to data collection.
Data will be collected by specialized agents through the training of dedicated data collection staff and workers residing in the communities they serve to ensure effective coverage of primary health care centers in underserved communities; data recording; collection and dissemination of primary health data.
This makes it possible to have relevant and reliable information, because the method and the current collection tools are faulty and the data of poor quality, with unqualified agents who are not really dedicated to the functions of collection, analysis and dissemination of health data.

The solution is used for (i) capacity building of health personnel and public administrators and the provision of quality data, while reducing the workload of nurses and doctors; (ii) political decision-makers by providing them with reliable and quality data to inform their political decisions on health programs; and (iii) donors through the availability of reliable health data to better decide on the allocation of grants and donations, by having a health statistics directory that is produced, validated and available.

The target population whose lives we will strive to directly and significantly improve are the rural population, youth and women in rural and underserved areas.
The underserved segment of the population is made up of young people and women, the elderly. This segment of the population that is currently underserved is found in the health districts of peri-urban and rural areas, whose health services often lack trained and available agents who work permanently from these underserved areas.
The solution will meet their needs through the permanent presence in primary health centers of trained and competent data collection agents.

Our team and I have a collaborative relationship between our Organization (Association - ASADD) and the Ministry of Health and Population through the signing of a partnership agreement. Then, our organization works with the local communities that we serve and these communities are represented during the activities and projects that we organize in their favor.

To understand the needs of the communities we serve, our team organizes missions to identify the problems and needs of the communities during meetings and consultations for the development of projects. The beneficiary communities of our projects and activities are involved when we develop the solution at the level of project development (identification of problems and solutions to problems) and the implementation of projects (monitoring-evaluation project activities).
The design and implementation of solutions are meaningfully guided by community input, ideas and agendas through community participation and involvement at all stages of projects from problem identification and means of solutions to problems, implementation of activities and monitoring of activities and expected objectives, as well as expected results of the project.

Our organization is facing the challenges, below, for which we are submitting our project (solution) and applying for the Challenge grant to overcome it:

1. Financial obstacles: lack of allocation of public and corporate funds to socio-economic and sustainable development initiatives of civil society (non-governmental, non-profit organization).

2. Technical barriers: weak capacity building capacity of data collection staff in health care centers. Low capacity of good infrastructure. Lack of interoperability between data, poor access to appropriate data, and different codes used to refer to the same health conditions, making it difficult to compare data.

3. Legal obstacles: the lack of popularization of national and international legal frameworks on data protection, the various interpretations and individual rules on health data for research.

The lack of clarity and inconsistent uses of certain terms can create significant challenges when obtaining consent, where it can be difficult to interpret what individuals have consented to.

4. Cultural barriers: secondary use of personal health data, for example, in research is not yet acceptable to people. Ways must be found to gain the trust of citizens.

The proposed solution is a new approach in that the matter is an innovation because such a solution does not yet exist in the field of health. This solution brings a considerable improvement to the problem because the quality of the data is not low and available, then the collection of health care data is not permanent.

This solution will bring about significant and catalytic change through the large-scale coverage of healthcare data collection and dissemination; the quality, reliability and availability of the data collected; the availability and competence of collection agents in health care centres; access of public administrators, political authorities and donors to reliable and available health data.
This solution will bring broader positive impacts to other sectors related to the health sector through the dissemination of the data collected.

- The 350 data collection agents trained, competent and placed in health care centres. The impact objectives will be achieved through the training and placement of collection agents in health care centers.

- The creation of a network of health data collection agents.

- The sharing of the information collected between the members of the network.

- Improving access to quality data and actionable information by health care providers, public administrators, policy makers and funders to optimize primary health care performance.

- 35% reduction in the burden rate of health care providers in their work, following the placement of health data collection agents.

- 30% improvement rate in the quality of health data.

- More than 20,000 health care delivery personnel now have access to quality health data and a map of recurrent diseases in the health districts.

  - More than 6,000 establishments of Integrated Health Centers and dispensaries across the health districts of Congo with 20,000 registered health workers.

- 1,000,000 patients have seen their care improved by the permanent availability of health care providers in primary health care centers (health care providers who no longer carry out data collection activities).

- More than 6,500 public institutions and nearly 450 private organizations now have access to quality and reliable collected data.

- Increase in the rate of data collection through training and permanent placement of data collection agents in primary health care centers.

- Improved quality of health care data.

- Increase in the quantity and quality of data collection by the number of primary health care centers covered by data collectors.

- Number of data collection agents trained.

- Number of health data collection staff assigned to the health districts.

- Proportion of health facilities with a trained and placed data collector.

- Number of health centers having benefited from the placement of a data collection agent.

- Number of health data collected.

- Number of health data available

- Number of collected data disseminated.

- Number of decisions and strategic decision-making taken by political authorities in terms of health programs and performance of health service delivery, following the quality and availability of health data collected.

- Percentage of improvement in health service delivery.

- Percentage of improvement in the quality of health data.

- Number of donors having obtained quality health data.

- Number of health data distributed by health area (example, Gynecology, Pediatrics, etc.).

- Proportion of young people and adults with skills in the field of information and communication technologies, by type of skill.

- Proportion of transition from informal employment to formal and decent employment.

- Proportion of population with access to a mobile network through SMS technology and computer applications in the health sector.

- Health care centers with health care data collected by qualified and competent data collectors.

- Health care providers have improved their quality of health care service delivery by having skilled permanent data collectors as a result of reducing their workload.

- Public administrators and political authorities benefit from reliable and available collected data to inform their political decisions and better orientation of health programs and policies to improve the performance of health services.

- Health data and information are accessible to provide appropriate health responses for populations, young people and women according to the medical sectors (eg paediatrics, gynecology, maternal and child health, etc.).

- The participation and involvement of data collectors is promoted in the improvement of data collection and their availability ensured by the placement of trained data collectors.

- Sensitization of health providers and public administrators resulted in positive change in Attitudes/Beliefs, Behaviors and Skills in health care facilities.

- The placement of data collectors in health care centers has had a positive impact in terms of data availability, leadership, internal policies, capacity and resources, and organizational mindset and practices.

- 25% increase in advanced and low data availabilities.

- 25% reduction in the professional expenses of health providers in health care centers.

- Improvement of the quality of specific data and their availability in health care centers, by facilitating their access to political decision-makers and strategic decision-making, donors and technical and financial development partners, researchers.

- Improvement of health care service delivery in health care centers.

To solve the challenges, the solution that will be used is based on SMS technology and software through the HealthDataNetwork by ASADD.

This solution uses mobile technology and computer applications to solve the problem of collecting reliable and quality data within the Central Data Storage Server between health data collection agents and the HealthDataNetwork by ASADD.

Health providers (nurses and doctors) can optimize their time for receiving and monitoring patients in primary health care centers in a structured way, while health data collection agents can concentrate on specific collection tasks data and its dissemination for better orientation and communication, in order to inform strategic decision-making.

This will involve giving health data collectors a digital connection to facilitate the recording, collection, dissemination of data to build the capacity of the health service, from service delivery at health district level to strategic planning.

Following selection and capacity building training in health care data collection, data collectors will be placed in primary health care centres. Data collectors will collect data through :

(i) software called District Health Information System (version 2, DHIS2) for data collection, compilation, analysis, data interpretation, decision making, transmission, archiving of data at the level of the health pyramid; and,

(ii) the various registers and dashboards of primary health care centers, and the use of tablets.

These health care data collectors will receive a salary for their incentive in carrying out this activity. Then they will be members of the ASADD Health Care Data Collection Network -

Our approach privileges the integration of our work by the respect of diversity to give a richness in the innovative ideas coming from the various communities of the company; by respect for equity offering people of all social classes an opportunity to flourish; and through inclusiveness to promote equal opportunity, the valuing of each person and the participation and involvement of different people without discrimination, respecting equality of sex, origin and culture, religion, disability, in order to serve the most underserved populations.

Our business model is non-profit.

We bring value to the people we serve through actions aimed at improving living conditions and empowering our beneficiaries in terms of impact and income.

We think of our main clients and beneficiaries by involving them in all stages of the project process by providing services in terms of training, equipment and resource allocation, awareness, advocacy, capacity building, implementation socio-economic and sustainable development projects, construction and rehabilitation of educational and health structures.

Beneficiaries need these services to acquire knowledge and skills, carry out income-generating activities, improve their living conditions and strengthen their resilience and empowerment.

- To become financially viable, our Plan will result in the establishment of the HealthDataNetwork by ASADD, rendering resource-generating services in the training and capacity building of health sector personnel and other organizations, as well as the disbursement by health care centers a small honorarium / monthly bonus to the HealthDataNetwork by ASADD.

- Employment, Healthcare (data collection, processing, dissemination), utility programs in terms of healthcare data collection; Low-income client / Health care centers in underserved areas and Private healthcare centers ; Organizational support of the healthcare centers .

1- By creating a multi-purpose agro-pastoral, fish-farming and fruit-growing centre, we have generated sales-training resources. In this way, our multi-purpose center project generates resources that have enabled the project to achieve financial viability.