Integrated Platform to Identify Malaria Data "Cold-Spots"

Jonathan Jackson of Dimagi in the U.S., together with James Faghmous from the Arnhold Institute for Global Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will develop an open platform that combines real-time data on health, climate, and the environment at high resolution, and near real-time satellite data to inform on population density, in order to detect areas containing limited information (cold-spots) on malaria so that control programs can better allocate resources. Current efforts suffer from the absence of up-to-date information and the difficulty of predicting when and where interventions are needed. Platform development will be conducted in collaboration with academia and the private sector, and will be designed to use existing data recorded on mobile devices, which contain GPS data. The platform will be designed to use existing data recorded on mobile devices, which contain GPS data. These data will be supplemented by designing a machine-learning approach to extract population density from global satellite data. They will test the accuracy and usability of their software in Senegal.