Beacon

Beacon’s mission is to connect the world’s most at-risk individuals to the rest of the community by providing them with a digital identity. We aim to give every HIV positive individual a profile that actively links them to local municipalities, governments, non-profits, and key policy makers; thereby creating a community network where data and information are available in real time. It is absolutely critical to reach across different activities to cohesively encapsulate efforts towards eradicating AIDS while involving key stakeholders in the decision making process.

There are thousands of community development programs underway in Africa, looking to improve the quality of life of individuals with HIV/AIDS. These programs individually address singular aspects of community driven innovation and development ranging from microfinance to communal farming cooperatives. The problem, however, stems from the fact that there exists no centralized database wherein information is stored; each governmental or non-profit entity keeps its own record of data stored and used. Vital information of individuals is stored in different places, by disparate entities, thereby providing each entity with an incomplete picture of the quality of life of an individual, especially those infected with HIV/AIDS. 

Kenya has 1.6 million people living with AIDS, with the number expected to rise by 2025.  Treatment coverage amongst women and children is only 24% despite commissioning of new programs.

The story of the rest of the world is no different; the world is a diverse land and AIDS is an equally diverse epidemic. There exists no cohesive database actively encapsulating different realms of community development efforts pertaining to at-risk individuals with HIV/AIDS.

Kargeno has been involved in a number of community driven initiatives over the course of the past ten years, catering to the vulnerable population infected with HIV and AIDS. We have actively worked with local municipalities, other non-profit entities as well as at-risk individuals to identify loopholes in the present framework from both ends of the development spectrum.

While working on different projects simultaneously, we noticed that every seemingly disparate initiative is inherently linked to another; for example, microfinancing can be directly correlated to the agribusiness or vocational training cooperatives: savings or loans taken from the ‘bank’ depend on the quality of harvest or profits from the sale of fashion items. Despite this interwoven nature of projects, there is no cohesive database that can guide decision makers towards effectively understanding the impact of any given initiative. Moreover, individuals on the receiving end of the development spectrum often have no role to play while deciding on a plan of action, and decision makers also miss out on individualized feedback or sentiment towards a service.

Smartphone usage permeates in all levels of society. Beacon effectively utilizes this aspect to link at-risk individuals to decision makers using a multi-objective digital framework.

Beacon uses an under-development blockchain-based platform for creating ‘distributed ledgers’ that store an individuals data in a secure and effective manner. Through Beacon, any individual with access to a mobile phone can create a digital identity which is then used to track the effectiveness of different community exercises. The inputs from the user are can be accessed by governments, non-profits and other decision makers on the permission of the user.

Beacon uses a permissioned decentralized blockchain network wherein data is stored as relevant nodes. This serves the following advantages:

• Every entry into the blockchain is immutable and any changes can be directly flagged
• The database is decentralized and hence is not controlled by a single entity
• Organizations may access this data on the permission of the user

Let’s explain the working of Beacon with a simple inforgraphic:

Let’s explain the working of Beacon with an example:

Durah is a single, HIV positive mother of three who struggles to keep her family afloat. She sends her children to school everyday and also takes care of her ailing parents. On top of all of this, she is currently under antiretroviral treatment for HIV and often forgets to take her medicines in a timely manner due to the inexplicable amount of work that she needs to manage at one.

Durah downloads the Beacon smartphone application or takes the help of a Beacon agent to create a digital profile with her relevant data. She then enrols in an agribusiness cooperative and uses her secure key to share her Beacon data with the officials. She is also able to acquire a loan from a microfinancing option set up by the government and once again uses her secure key to share relevant data with the government. Using the app, she was able to decide what data is shared and what is kept private. The government decides to start a cellular reminder service for HIV positive individuals and accesses the Beacon ledger for this data. Durah’s name props up once a week and she is reminded to take her medicine. Relevant non-profits also approach her on the basis of her publicly shared data. Durah is also able to participate anonymously in public opinion polls and give emoji reactions to new initiatives and schemes set forth by the government. 

Beacon cohesively integrates a number of mobile healthcare opportunities within a digital ecosystem that has the potential to create healthy communities and better the lives of people around the world. Beacon addresses several aspects of innovation and gives one solution covering a host of problems:

1. Adds a new dimension to data storage- Governments spend a very high amount of money on data collection and census. The Kenyan government is expected to spend USD200 million on collecting data; with a solution mapping a multitude of domains, data collection and storage is handled effectively, securely and economically.

2. A new ecosystem covering a range of thematic areas– There are thousands of solutions out there that address mobile healthcare. Instead of focusing on just one aspect of community integration for HIV positive individuals, Beacon operates in a way no other mobile platform has done before: by providing HIV positive individuals with a suite of tools to make their lives better.

3. Using citizens as active users– do you ever think to wonder about a fundamental question all business ventures ask in the preliminary stage: what is your target population? At Kargeno, we approach this a little differently; we ask ourselves how to involve the local community as much as possible while ideating for community driven solutions. By engaging in data storage and sharing, opinion polls and even data validation, individuals become as important as the nodes of the Blockchain apparatus and pave the way for important milestones.

Blockchain is one of the most popular technologies of the 21st Century and has been around for a little over 10 years. Blockchain is shared database wherein information is stored in a decentralized ledger; essentially, all of the data and information is not location at a single point but is stored in distributed ‘nodes’ spanning as wide as the amount of information that needs to be stored. While Blockchains can be both public and private, every entity connected to the blockchain can add and review data present. That way, whenever any modifications are made to a chain, it gets reflected to all of the users. Think of Blockchain as a line of people holding hands. Every ‘node’ is connected to the one on either side; and if you break a node, people will notice the missing link!

Beacon combines this ledger technology with mHealth to cultivate a digital system for HIV positive individuals to improve their quality of life and community inclusiveness. The interface connecting the Blockchain to an individual is via a dedicated mHealth application. When a user creates an account, a new data point is created on the Blockchain which can then be accessed or reviewed by entities with access to the data. The user decides which information is public and private at the time of registering. Furthermore, officials and organizations may access the user’s data on the permission of the user; for example, microfinancing organization could request access to an individuals credit history and pending loans.

To analyse the feasibility of the project, we implemented both a feasibility study as well as a pilot study with a control population of 200. Both studies were conducted in Kisumu, a village in the western region of Kenya. Although we did not implement data storage using a distributed ledger, we tried to analyse the requirements of HIV positive people and kept tailoring the initial mobile application to their needs.

For the pilot study, we installed the Beacon application on the smartphones of users. We also wanted to see how someone without a smartphone could store his/her data on a centralized database. To reach out to this segment (n=50) of the control population, we organized weekly visits wherein information was retrieved, modified and stored. We also studied the receptivity of the application from shopkeepers and individuals who give informal loans so that we could test the efficacy of Beacon from all perspectives of users.

The Kargeno Beacon team currently serves a network of 200 individuals, 56 percent of whom are widowed women. Our first phase pilot study is set to conclude this September, following which we will make necessary modifications to the digital ecosystem, taking into account the feedback and reviews given by stakeholders across multiple levels.

Most of Kargeno’s activities are based in Kisumu, Kenya. Kisumu has the third highest number of individuals affected with HIV in the country. 25% of Kisumu’s population is HIV positive. By August, Kargeno plans on making the digital ecosystem available to 10,000 HIV positive individuals residing in Kisumu. As Beacon is an ancillary mHealth application, individuals already undergoing treatment for HIV can be easily assimilated into the system.

A database is as strong as the amount of data it contains. By the end of the second year, we aim to reach out to all 70,000 individuals at risk in Kisumu as well as other towns surrounding Lake Victoria. Following assimilation into local and private programs and on strengthening the secure data keeping process, Beacon will be deployed at nodal cities in Kenya covering a population of 500000 individuals who are currently at risk.

At Kargeno, we set our impact bar as high as possible. It motivates us to be able to affect the lives of thousands and ultimately millions of people all over the world. An epidemic like AIDS can only be battled with a program that has the ability to spread on a logarithmic scale.

Apart from expanding Beacon’s reach to cover 10000 at-risk individuals residing in Kisumu by August 2020, here’s an overview of our goals that we wish to fulfil within the next year:

• Assimilation into local and private programs: the Kargeno team will be working round the clock to get in touch with stakeholders, actively creating a disjointed network of Beacon users
• Creating an innovation pipeline for at risk individuals to actively participate in community activities: Beacon’s main goal is to create cohesive communities regardless of an individuals medical status. Starting with Kisumu, we will be integrating our agriculture and microfinancing cooperatives with Beacon to better understand the interplay between mHealthcare and community activities
• Data security: Kargeno will be looking to recruit volunteers with a technical background in Blockchain and Crypto to better secure an individual’s data

Our five year goals are a little more grandiose and generic; apart from expanding our reach, we’d like to draw you attention to a couple of cartograms developed by Prof Newman at the University of Michigan.

Here’s an ordinary map of the world:

And here’s a cartogram that represents the number of HIV positive individuals, with the area of countries resized according to the count: 

At Kargeno, we’re aiming to make this cartogram as unskewed as possible, starting with Kenya and moving on to cover as much ground as possible. We hope that in five years, we can assess our impact by replotting the cartogram and seeing where we stand. 

While brainstorming for hurdles that Beacon may encounter, we divided them into distinct categories:

1. Monetary: Setting up of a distributed ledger or database that can be coupled with a mobile application requires a significant amount of backend infrastructure. As the solution scales up and covers larger populations, we would require an even greater amount of infrastructure. The initial setting up of Beacon infrastructure is a hurdle from a financial perspective; funding agencies require proof of concept however we currently do not possess the funds to display so

2. Implementation: In Kisumu alone, 25% of the population is HIV positive however low literacy rates prove to be an impediment in alleviating the problem. The government has developed a number of infographics addressed to HIV positive individuals however many do not understand even simple instructions and precautions. Additionally, the mHealth application also requires a valid sim card to be inserted into the phone of the user. Most Sim purchases require a valid ID to be presented to the seller however many individuals do not possess a government issued ID and thus are unable to buy a sim card. This matter is not just limited to Kisumu: more than one billion people globally are unable to prove their identity.

3. Data: There are many aspects that go into making a successful technological breakthrough such as demographic information, user interface design, phone usage statistics, family information, etc however there is a lack of data especially for at-risk populations. 

The successful implementation of any community driven initiative requires thoughtful planning and implementation. To overcome the aforementioned problems, we at Kargeno ensured that there are as few hurdles along our way:

1. Monetary challenges are relatively easy to overcome. Our extremely motivated team is ready to collaborate with stakeholders from diverse fields and backgrounds. Forging concrete partnerships with the right people can definitely help propel Beacon into the global spotlight.

2. Beacon proposes the establishment of an alternative verified digital identification which may act as a substitute for standard government issued identification. Moreover, the revamped version of the Beacon mHealth application contains a text to speech option wherein a user may choose to listen to pre-recorded audio announcements and precautionary information.

3. We aim to tackle this challenge in particular by organizing ‘brute force’ data campaigns wherein volunteers physically collect demographic information, et cetera by visiting prospective users of the application. Although this may not sound logistically feasible, we look towards generating a basic initial data set that can give us an insight with regard to usage statistics, receptivity and potential roadblocks with regard to data collection.

Kargeno employs ten full time staff members and six volunteers from across the world to solve challenges presented to the local community. Together, we work on projects ranging from mHealth to education, and even agriculture cooperatives. Kargeno is always recruiting local workforces from different villages in the Asembo region to form workforces for any project in action.

Depending on the project being developed, we gather together a number of volunteers and contractors from the local community to help us achieve our mission.

The Kargeno Beacon team is composed of a number of individuals having multidisciplinary backgrounds and one common goal: to improve the livelihoods of individuals affected by HIV  and residing in at-risk communities. From a skill-based outlook, many members of the project team are perfectly suited for the implementation of the project as we possess undergraduate and graduate degrees in development studies, health systems management, professional certificates in HIV/AIDS as well as diplomas in community health and development.

We also have  number of field officers who are currently studying public health and community development.

In essence, the Kargeno Beacon team is extremely well positioned to handle the project at hand. Driven by our love for sustainable technology and community development, we are ready to use all of our experience to foster community driven innovation and development. Moreover, the Kargeno team has fifteen years of experience successfully implementing such interventions that can increase the efficacy of HIV prevention strategies. We feel we can leverage this experience to combine best practices in the form of an mHealth innovation to help at-risk communities.

The Kargeno team always rejoices in partnering with like-minded organizations and individuals from across the world. We deeply appreciate collaborative efforts that can help build healthy communities. We are currently partnering with a host of organizations and initiatives. Here, we have listed out the entities that we are currently associated with and how exactly we are working with them:

Engineers without Borders at University of California Davis, USA: We are working with young student volunteers to help brainstorm for grassroots innovation pertaining to HIV as well as water scarcity in Asembo

Village Volunteers based out of Seattle, USA: our fiscal sponsors helps us get extremely qualified volunteers to aid us with project implementation efforts

Partners for International Development based in Toronto, Canada, is our development partner and has been helping the Kargeno team with resource mobilization as well as fundraising

Manipal Institute of Technology based in India: this academic institution is working towards the development of the Blockchain technology that interfaces with the Beacon application. They will also continue to provide tech support once the system is up and running

Beacon is a cohesive ecosystem that integrates front-line healthcare for HIV with a suite of tools and data for individuals and governments respectively. With Beacon, at-risk individuals can lead a better quality life, feel included in their communities, and of course be administered more effective and efficient aid for HIV. Beacon is modelled so as to incentivize users towards providing and sharing their data. Every time some data is shared by the user to an organization (say a Bank), the user gets a top up in their Beacon mobile wallet. While this is currently in its Beta testing phase, we have noticed that incentivizing mothers and the elderly in this manner has encouraged them to share their data on a safe platform. Essentially, Beacon provides at-risk individuals with better healthcare, better livelihoods, all while helping them gain some passive income.

Key customers of our product include both HIV positive individuals as well as governments and small business entities looking to digitize data collection and business operation for a wider reach. The best part about Beacon can be highlighted in terms of the beneficiaries. We make everyone happy: individuals, the government, NGOs, communities and even nodal businesses!

The Kargeno team has been actively deploying one community initiative at a time in the form of a product and service for the past 15 years. Now that we posses the right technology and backing, we are ready to multiply our impact and help those in need with a versatile platform.

Beacon assigns a monetary value to a user’s digital identity.

Beacon will requisition a small fee from any entity requesting access to a particular set of a user’s data on the prior permission of the user. Seventy percent of this fee will be given to the user and the rest of the proceeds are used for maintaining project Beacon’s infrastructure. What’s even better is that the data provided to the entity cannot be manipulated or modified without creating a red flag on the distributed ledger.

For businesses, NGOs, community cooperatives and other governmental initiatives, a digitized form of data collection significantly lowers the cost of other commonly used brute force methods of customer data herding; it also provides the added benefit of community insights, sentiment analysis on a particular community, live metrics and a host of other opportunities that better the delivery of healthcare to those in need.

For users, monetizing information instils strength in the data sharing process while providing a suite of applications that better their lives. In all cases, Beacon’s model is a win-win for all stakeholders.

In a single sentence: Solve helps us take our technology and establish partnerships with a diverse range of individuals, organizations and stakeholders.

There is no dearth of community driven innovations at the grassroots level, but many times, these solutions do not percolate down to the target customer segment. With formal guidance from the Solve community, Beacon can help make our HIV cartogram unskewed. Global epidemics such as AIDS can only be solved with extensive collaboration and partnerships. We’re here to captain the ship sailing from Kisumu and we’re ready to sail with Solve’s help!

Solve set’s a course towards rapid implementation, scalability and impact. We’re here to broker partnerships, get a stage and put Beacon out in front of the world community. Moreover, Solve’s mentors and teams have diverse backgrounds and specializations, which is something that Kargeno lacks. While brainstorming implementation strategies, it would be great to look at the challenge from a social, economic, technological and innovative perspective simultaneously; the power of this discussion lies in presenting our idea through Solve’s platform.

As we saw through our pilot study, Beacon has the potential to impact millions of lives. Solve puts hundreds of people from all over the world in a single place, thereby giving us the opportunity to better our solution and broaden our impact.

Solve puts hundreds of people of diverse backgrounds, thinking styles, experience in a single room with a common goal: SOLVE problems in an innovative manner. At Kargeno, we have been implementing solutions at a relatively small scale however our solutions have had a great impact in the Asembo and Kisumu region for Kenya.

On actively partnering with teams and educational institutions from around the world, we’re ready to take the next step towards the implementation of Beacon.

Moreover, with 15 years of experience in the field, our team would love to give our views and guidance to other teams and individuals working in the same domain. We’re excited to share our experiences and help shape the implementation plans of other Solvers from around the world. It’s a give and take relationship, and we’re very excited to be a part of it.

Given the nature of Beacon and its ability to create a cohesive ecosystem for the user, we are looking to connect with a number of small businesses, enterprises and community groups. While a number of these connections are being formalized as of this moment, there are a number of organizations and type of businesses that we wish to partner with for better implementation of Beacon:

• Mobile network operators (MNOs): We are looking to partner with Safaricom for analysing how the digital identity created by Beacon users can be used in place of a KYC during sim registration
• Farming and educational cooperatives: We’re looking to partner with local cooperatives around the Asembo and Kisumu region in general. Additionally, we’d love to partner with other Nairobi based firms such as a previous Solve participant, Moringa School. Using Beacon for registration of students and exploring other possibilities for parents through the mHealth app will be an interesting challenge
• Banks and microfinancing institutions: Sharing previous and current data that helps creditors assess an individuals financial situation is a key part of Beacon
• Frontline health workers and community medicine centres: The most important aspect of Beacon is effectively coordinating and regulating community activities aimed at individuals with HIV

The GM prize focuses on solutions that better the lives of underrepresented individuals in society. Individuals with HIV are often ostracized from society and alienated from every aspect of the community. Even in Kenya, where the bonds between community members are so strong, people with HIV (often single mothers) are left to care for themselves and neglected. With Beacon, we will not only be equipping these individuals with an ecosystem that involves them in community activities via a digital identity, however it also helps us move one step closer towards community level inclusion. Shop owners, agriculture cooperative managers, etc, will be motivated to care for those who are in need. Individuals equipped with the application will be better aware of the activities taking place around them. Moreover, by virtue of the mHealth application, effectiveness and proper delivery of frontline health care further betters their health and propels them towards leading a happier life.

Beacon is a win-win solution for both the users as well as other organizations and entities looking to address the global epidemic. Together with blockchain technology, we’re ready to transform frontline health care and remediation.