App/Software

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) including pre-eclampsia and eclampsia are a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide, yet can be prevented through early detection of blood pressure (BP) and timely and evidence-based case management. We propose to integrate a cuffless smartphone BP measurement software (OptiBP) within a robust longitudinal health record and decision support system (OpenSRP) for ANC, as a comprehensive approach to drive accurate assessment and timely management of HDP and improve correct action rates.

In India, people with disability, particularly children with delayed development, are extremely marginalized. In Tamil Nadu, 45% of children with disabilities do not attend school, compared to 3% of all children in India. Early intervention (EI) therapies have been proven particularly effective for children with, or at risk of, developmental delays, including increasing their educational and developmental gains.

Marginalized and disempowered Indigenous communities continue to face threats to their land. This technology is a powerful tool to protect territories and strengthen claims. Although Indigenous peoples have the formal right to free, prior, and informed consent to projects in their territories, it can be difficult to adequately monitor activities in their territories.

For the last decade, Somalia has suffered from one of the highest rates of emergency-level malnutrition. Lack of timely, reliable nutrition and mortality data prevents humanitarian actors from responding appropriately in time; there is shortage in skilled surveyors and data collection is biased, costly, slow and lacks transparency. SMARTplus is a digital infrastructure generating accurate data with less resources (staff/time), to ensure malnourished children receive life-saving health services.

Christine Musyimi of Africa Mental Health Foundation in Kenya will aim at reducing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) among pregnant women through anger management strategies, delivered via mobile phones to potential IPV perpetrators (PIP) in rural Kenya, where resources of mental health specialists are limited.

Nicki Tiffin, Professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, will build an online platform – the African Data and Biospecimen Exchange – to facilitate equitable, ethical, and transparent data and biospecimen sharing on the continent, and promote research collaborations to improve health. Sharing biospecimens and data such as human genomics and pathogen sequencing data for use by other scientists is critical to sustain research in Africa.

Shafiq-ul Islam of ACME AI in Bangladesh will produce a smartphone-based system that uses computer vision and machine learning to accurately estimate the weight of cows and goats to help smallholder livestock farmers in rural Bangladesh maximize productivity and profits. Accurately determining livestock weight is challenging for these farmers but critical for determining the right amounts of food and medicines.

Sanjeev Kumar of The Goat Trust in India will develop animated mobile applications that provide information on improving productivity, veterinary and financial services, and markets for women goat herders in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to increase their income. These women work in remote regions with limited support, and many are illiterate. They will develop simple applications with health, nutrition, animal husbandry, a marketplace, and management components, and integrate value-chain players such as products and services suppliers.

Esther Muiruri of Equity Group Foundation in Kenya will expand their Equity Online-Agriculture platform to provide information on agricultural best practices, including smart-farming innovations, as well as access to financing and markets to initially 200,000, and subsequently up to two million, small-scale farmers in Kenya to improve their productivity and income. They will build the platform to digitally disseminate agricultural information such as soil testing and pest and disease control, which will improve timely planting and crop and livestock management.

Danielle Ehret of the Vermont Oxford Network in the U.S. in collaboration with Krista Donaldson of Equalize Health also in the U.S. and Mahlet Abayneh of the Ethiopian Pediatrics Society, will develop a web-based clinical training course to train staff in neonatal intensive care units in Ethiopia to better recognize respiratory distress syndrome in preterm infants, and to safely deliver continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to reduce mortality rates. Respiratory distress syndrome causes almost half of all preterm deaths in neonatal units in Ethiopia.