Afya Intelligence

The DHIS2 Market Analysis for 2016-2021 showed that DHIS2 has become the preferred data management tool of choice in 60 countries. It is the national standard in more than 21 countries.

As Health information data collection systems in many countries have matured, the demands of healthcare programs have shifted to improving the use of information by healthcare providers to strengthen health services delivery and health outcomes.

However the healthcare performance data is usually trapped in siloed platforms, offline or requiring multiple logins. So healthcare providers don't get  timely feedback and are often forced to make gut decisions without having the full picture.

Visualization of common requests is also time consuming for the small skilled workforce. Healthcare managers don't have time to add data acquisition, processing and dissemination into their busy routines.

Leveraging innovation and technology in responding to such demands from countries already using DHIS2 services represents an enormous potential for improving healthcare services—as well as a main challenge in the next five years. This requires strengthening of the DHIS2 data analytics capabilities and linking to third-party tools for data visualization, analysis, and dissemination. 

The Solution: 

The Afya Intelligence chatbot acts as a front end data integration and utilization tool allowing users at all levels of the health system to query and access data from multiple systems (eg. eLMIS, DHIS2) by just making a selection of the insights they need.

Afya Intelligence builds utilization-ready healthcare intelligence from existing information systems and allow healthcare providers, managers and teams to engage with insights and forecasts for crucial decision making through SMS and social messaging based chatbots. 

Our 5 step methodology involves 

1. Selecting performance data  for a minimum  set of data elements collected by DHIS and eLMIS (stock status, services by gender, type, dose, and location)  jointly agreed by stakeholders as of high importance. 

2. Developing APIs for RapidPro and Analytics platforms integration with DHIS2 and eLMIS

3.  Afya Intelligence then conducts rigorous data analysis to generate insights and forecasts on how the programs, regions and primary healthcare facilities must adapt and adjust to fit unique contexts. 

4. Data is then disseminated through SMS and WhatsApp based chatbots and reviewed in a facilitated process in weekly performance review meetings, where our partners discuss  the findings to inform the modifications of the services strategies.

5. Insights allows healthcare providers to craft perfect healthcare experiences for individuals and communities in Africa. 

Healthcare workers, program officers, and management teams in countries implementing DHIS2 and eLMIS will benefit from this solution.

Today, DHIS2 is the world’s largest Health Information Management System (HMIS) platform, in use by ministries of health in 73 low and middle-income countries. 2.4 billion people (30% of the world’s population) live in countries where DHIS2 is used. With the inclusion of NGO-based programs, DHIS2 is in use in more than 100 countries.

Afya Intelligence is NOT just a Company. We are a Community!

We are building a community of like minded people (and partners) in Africa who are dedicated to not just building ourselves successful AI solutions, but also collectively raising the vision for healthcare services in our communities, and delivering it consistently.

We identify with healthcare service providers, who want to be leaders in their field by capitalizing on data and being early creators and adopters of useful technology. We are their personalized assistance that automates basic tasks, make data work for them, buy them time, help them achieve their dream of providing quality healthcare services while taking good care of their families.

We Invest in Our Clients

In the past 12 months, Afya Intelligence has committed resources of its AI, supply chain, analytics & research experts and identified service areas that best align with clients’ interests.  We are technology, knowledge and insights service that is happily shared with our peers. We are a Purposeful, Creative & Youth led African Community. We use data, innovation & partnerships to evolve healthcare value chains in our communities . We achieve perfect healthcare experiences through consistent availability of affordable, high-quality products and services for all. We are committed to this vision.

We are Local Experts with Global Expertise: 

10+ years of experience in the healthcare, supply chain, technology & data management at national, subnational and facility level in Africa.

We understand how to work with both government and private sector to take advantage of innovation to maximize the use of limited resources 

Our Artificial Intelligence(AI) expertise enables us to develop modern solutions that are practical, adapted to  local context, and that focus on optimizing the concurrent outcomes of improving client service and efficiency

Our vision is to scale our services to reach public and private sector clients throughout Tanzania and Africa. Our overall fundraising objectives for the next 24 months...

• obtain funding for the expansion of technology infrastructure to support locally hosting RapidPro & machine learning use cases 

• acquire, train and maintain talent for innovate new methods, RapidPro and machine learning models for delivering supply chain intelligence

• Acquire necessary office infrastructure to support a hybrid working environment for our staff post COVID-19. We currently work remotely.

• reduce risks by diversifying our sources of revenue

• There is a funding gap for technology and infrastructure expenses that  are not covered by the consulting agreements and technical assistance grants.

• We hope to raise an additional unrestricted funding to build  our talent pool and fund robust infrastructure,  including computers to support advanced Machine learning algorithms.

• About 50% of the CTO’s time is spent on fundraising, which does not allow him to focus on  program innovation.

Our solution is built on existing behavior:

Most health workers have been observed to collect and disseminate data through common communication platforms, primarily WhatsApp, by requesting the data from the database managers and facility workers. Afya Intelligence works to automate this and allow pulling, aggregating and visualizing of data directly from the different information systems through WhatsApp, and adding a layer of forecasting that allows more insights to the decision-makers as required.

Our solution empowers healthcare workforce with a chatbot that...

• Offers 24/7 Support
• Leverages existing digital Investments (DHIS & eLMIS)
• Bridges Gaps across Levels
• Powered by AI
• Data be Accessed through Multiple Channels SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram

Our solution is built on top of an open source and scalable global-good (RapidPro) that can help healthcare programs to harness the potential that social media and artificial intelligence provides to strengthen national, subnational and primary healthcare level monitoring of healthcare services.

Our solution differentiates itself from other readily available solutions

Existing solutions require web-based or mobile app platforms to access the data, creating a higher accessibility hurdle, we use common social messaging platforms that are already in the hands of all the workers. And Afya Intelligence can be ported to SMS allowing access to data in areas with limited / no connectivity

Our goal is to craft 20 million perfect vaccination experiences in 12 months. We are doing this by supporting Tanzania's monitoring and evaluation of COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

Tanzania is currently leveraging our data science support for predictive utilization-focused monitoring, evaluation and adaptive learning(MEAL) approach to address the unique challenges in providing community-based COVID-19 vaccination services such as shortage of vaccines, resource constraints, sociocultural factors, dynamic population movements, and geographic barriers.

This unique MEAL approach has helped inform motivation, supervision and support for low performing health facilities and contributed to adaptable community based vaccination campaigns. As of 31st July 2022,  During the dissemination of week 12 findings, 50% of the regions had reached the goal of phase 1 (30% of population above 18 fully vaccinated). While phase 2 data is still being collected and analyzed,  it will be ready for sharing in November.  

Our goal for next 5 years is to scale Afya Intelligence across other health programs (Routine immunization, Malaria, Reproductive health, and NCDs) and 5 new geographies (in Africa) impacting 50 Million people.

Afya Intelligence scaling will be measured along 4 key dimensions to ensure progress towards the IMPACT goals.

1. Programmatic: Growth is anticipated on the healthcare programs supported. Countries initially adopt Afya Intelligence for Immunization health information, and energized by its success, seek to expand to other health programs including HIV/AIDS, malaria elimination, NCDs, and various others..

2. Partnership: There is rising demand for Afya Intelligence adoption and partnerships in new countries. At least 3 new countries in Africa in the next 5 years.

3. New Users Domains: Future access of eLMIS and DHIS2 beyond those users already in existence.

4. Interoperability: Building interoperability and integration across systems is a key priority of countries’ policy makers and in the donor community. Afya Intelligence contribution in this effort enabling these integrations will exponentially scale the functional capacity of eLMIS and DHIS2 and lead to many new applications.

We leverage data collected by existing systems (DHIS2 and eLMIS). This data is normally collected by healthcare workers or data managers at subnational level.

We also use population based data like census, demographic health surveys for forecasting

• Afya Intelligence is dedicated to rebuilding trust in healthcare by leveraging innovation and partnerships to ensure quality healthcare products and services are accessible and affordable to all.

• The Afya Intelligence business model depends on the private and public healthcare industry running on high operational costs—that end up as a high burden to public healthcare systems and even worse as high prescription prices that private pharmacies charge to poor individuals and communities in Africa, which is the majority. 

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• Afya Intelligence’s partners with public and private sector stakeholders to achieve status of quality low cost provider by effectively leveraging digital  technology and data to ensure that costs are kept low through operating efficiencies. Adopting our technologies enables our partners to eliminate some of the operational costs.

• Finally, Afya Intelligence is designed to hold the organization's hand during their digital transformation. The keys to success are: maintaining low overhead and operating costs, satisfying our customers so they will return again and again, and providing better prices than all our competitors

• We are set to redefine the provision of healthcare intelligence services low income countries not just here in Tanzania but all over Africa, which is why we aim to hire the best health and technology experts who not only ensures that we are following all the necessary procedures in doing things at the same time looking into using the best ways to get things done from the development stage, pretesting and on to the deployment stage. Afya Intelligence’s main goal is to provide healthcare intelligence services for our customers at the lowest prices on the market.

  

  The total available market is the healthcare value chain stakeholders in Africa. Our current obtainable market is healthcare value chain stakeholders in East Africa beginning with Tanzania. This includes the governments, donors (GAVI, USAID, BMGF etc), development partners (e.g. UNFPA, UNICEF), implementing partners, medical stores departments, ministry of health programs(e.g. immunization, Family planning, National Aids Control Program e.t.c) , Pharmaceutical suppliers, Healthcare service providers, Healthcare technology companies 

Afya Sustainability relies on developing products for private sector in healthcare. 

The proposed unique value exchange between Afya Intelligence and private healthcare organizations is charging starting after 3 months of the partnership agreement. This requires Afya Intelligence to demonstrate value for clients without upfront investment. We offer two pricing models for our diverse clients, either

• a one-time fee based on the costs to build as percent of value the client would receive from the services e.g 10% of expected ROI that include the costs served (actual or projected) by using Afya Intelligence services. or 
• A revenue share agreement through strategic partnerships with private organizations negotiated based on the value of Afya's intelligence services and alignment of the organization's growth strategies. 

 To expand in new geographies, Afya intelligence's long-term strategy is to reinvest the revenue share into other digital and e-health companies in exchange for an equity share. Through this Afya Intelligence is directly invested in the success and growth of e-health in Africa.

We are currently in learning partnership with a  supplier for dental products and equipment (Dentopharma limited) to design custom product and services for them. Our goal is to develop a payed service for pharmaceutical suppliers within 12 Months.