Digital health for non-communicable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa

ComBaCaL is a multi-disciplinary project tackling the rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs, e.g., diabetes and hypertension) in sub-Saharan Africa. The project aims to empower community-health workers (i.e., lay people without a formal medical education, CHWs) to provide basic health services like screening/diagnosing and treating NCDs to their community. A mobile application called CHT (community health toolkit) forms the foundation of these efforts as it provides decision support and basic task management to the CHWs.

Initial results are promising and demonstrate that IT-equipped CHWs can provide such basic health services. Nevertheless, we identified some challenges that need to be addressed to support the CHWs to continuously provide high-quality services. In this master project, your group will develop a working prototype for a planning app that addresses two identified challenges.

• First, the current medical algorithm (i.e., a decision tree) does not consider the CHWs’ personal preferences, such as preferred working days. The planning app should account for such preferences and generate a schedule that optimizes the CHWs’ preferences and the priorities of open tasks. Otherwise, the CHWs may not complete their task on time which could potentially harm their patients.
• Second, the task-shifting of diagnosis and treatment from nurses in clinics to CHWs in the communities requires improved logistics. The CHWs need various materials for their work (e.g., gloves, blood glucose strips, etc.) and hand out medication to patients. Running out of stocks negatively impacts the CHWs’ work (i.e., inability to complete tasks) and, more importantly, the patient (i.e., does not have medication).