Rain Concert Technologies based in Technopark here has been selected technology solution provider and implementation partner for one of the largest and ambitious public health projects of the Government of Tanzania.

The federal government has identified Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD), a group of parasitic diseases occurring in large sections of the population, as a major health challenge.

CONTROL PROGRAMME

A nation-wide control programme has been established for administering drugs to all affected individuals in the country, says Mr Abhilash R., Chief Executive Officer, Rain Concert.

The company will provide a unique management information system (MIS) using flexible web-mobile convergent technologies for effective implementation, management and analysis of this programme.

It has built-in functionalities to track data on demography as well as drug supply and administration. It also has automated capabilities for supporting advanced analyses and reporting, including generation of maps.

Thus, the NTD-MIS will facilitate not only effective administration of the complex programme but also measurement of its effectiveness in controlling these diseases.

LARGEST INITIATIVE

Being implemented under the initiative of the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Tanzania, this will be the largest m-health initiative in the African region.

Under the project, the current manual field level data collection will be replaced with a mobile technology-based survey providing instant data capture process.

This will help achieve faster and reliable data collection, analysis and administration of the programme and provide enough data for future health planning and intervention.

The Ministry of Health, Tanzania, is already considering the expansion of this system to address its other health initiatives, Mr Abhilash said.

PILOT TESTS

The project is currently being implemented in phases in Tanzania, starting with a recently concluded successful pilot implementation in Morogoro region.

The pilot tested the feasibility of capturing data rapidly from households in each hamlet of selected villages by using a mobile phone installed with census and drug distribution applications.

The next phase will cover an entire district and will incorporate feedback and learning gathered from the pilot implementation for ensuring efficient scaling up of the system.

Rain Concert seeks to demonstrate its expertise in convergence technology and to leverage on its e-governance and m-governance domain skills to apply competencies in the health sector.

EMBEDDED SOLUTION

Dr Mwele Malacele, Director of NIMR and initiator of this project, has indicated that the success of the project is largely determined by the mobile phone-driven empowerment of village health workers, reach of the programme, and nature, quality and reliability of various reports being generated by the system.

“The overwhelming response is prompting us to research and deliver a comprehensive future embedded solution,” says Mr Abhilash.

The successful progress would make the MIS highly applicable to NTD programmes implemented elsewhere in the African continent and even beyond.

Preliminary discussions are ongoing with the Tanzanian Government and with NGOs involved in similar global programmes for assessing the potential of such a rollout.

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