Making every antibiotic count

Simprints Technology Ghana

Making every antibiotic count

Improving TB drug stock control through biometric-traceability and AI-driven forecasting that aligns supply with real-time patient treatment

Accra, Ghana

GHA

Nonprofit

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a critical public health concern in Ghana. An estimated 44,000 TB cases occur annually, yet over 63% go undiagnosed or unreported—especially among children, where up to 86% of cases are missed (WHO Ghana, 2023). Despite investments, TB treatment coverage has stagnated at just 31% over the past 15 years (Global Fund OIG Ghana Report, 2023). The TB Modelling and Analysis Consortium estimates that 15–20% of patients drop out before initiating treatment, particularly for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). Low screening coverage and poorly designed community case finding strategies drive these gaps. Weak patient-level data systems and fragmented, paper-based reporting hinder visibility into who has been screened or missed. Additionally, current TB drug forecasting relies on aggregate DHIS2 data, which shows discrepancies of up to 40% in some regions. Despite the rollout of Ghana’s Integrated Logistics Management Information System (GhiLMIS), TB drug forecasting still depends on incomplete and inconsistent data. Although national stock-out rates are not published, officials report local shortages due to limited visibility into real-time demand and treatment adherence. Without a system linking diagnosis, adherence, and stock decisions at the individual level, Ghana’s TB program remains constrained in its ability to find, treat, and retain patients.

Simprints’ solution bridges the gap between treatment delivery and antibiotic stock control in low-resource settings. We provide a biometric-powered Android app that enables frontline health workers to digitize TB patient journeys—screening, diagnosis, and treatment, all in real time—even in offline last-mile settings. Each patient encounter is verified via fingerprint or face recognition, ensuring unique records for every patient. Community health workers use the app to log screenings and DOTS/VOT adherence with time and GPS stamps—creating granular community-level data typically lost in paper-based systems. This data is synced with national platforms like DHIS2 and GhiLMIS, enabling real-time visibility of treatment delivery and medication usage. Crucially, the system feeds into a decision-focused learning (DFL) model trained not just to forecast average demand, but to optimize supply decisions that improve course completion, avoid mispredictions and understocking, and reduce loss to follow-up—especially in high-risk areas (Wang et al., AAAI 2023; Shah et al., NeurIPS 2022). Co-designed with Ghana Health Service and the National TB Control Program, this solution is offline-capable, secure, open-source, and interoperable with existing government systems. Built for scale, our system closes the loop between care and supply—ensuring every dose reaches the right patient, at the right time.

Simprints serves vulnerable patients in Ghana who depend on timely access to life-saving antibiotics for conditions like tuberculosis (TB), maternal and neonatal infections, childhood pneumonia, and post-surgical complications. These communities are often underserved due to poor identification systems, fragmented patient records, and weak data on service delivery—leading to treatment delays, missed follow-ups, and critical stock-outs of medicines. Our digital solution addresses this by enabling accurate patient identification and tracking, creating a reliable new stream of community-level data on screenings, diagnoses, and treatments. This data fills a major gap in health supply chains: real-time insight into where medicines are actually needed. In Ghana, where 63% of TB cases go undiagnosed or unreported, our system ensures that patients are correctly linked to services—and that their care is visible in the supply chain. By powering smarter stock control, our solution helps prevent dangerous shortages and reduces wasteful overstocking. For patients, this means antibiotics are on hand when urgently needed, enabling faster treatment, better outcomes, and fewer preventable deaths. While the current focus is TB, the platform is designed to scale across health areas where stock reliability is critical—ensuring every dose reaches the people who need it most.