Real-Time Disease Monitoring for SwissTPH

By integrating a CommCare mobile data collection app with a national DHIS2 reporting system for the ALMANACH health initiative, OpenFn provided SwissTPH with an automated, real-time connection that enables live disease monitoring in 2019.

SwissTPH: A world-leading institute in global health

The diverse professionals working at SwissTPH all have one common goal: to improve the health of people globally. In Nigeria, SwissTPH is helping healthcare providers to better screen, diagnose, and treat sick children through the ALMANACH health initiative. To do so, they are actively researching how to improve both curative care and the prevention of disease to ensure the best treatment possible.

SwissTPH is a global health institute focusing on infectious and non-communicable diseases, health system, interventions, and environment. It aims to improve population health, nationally and internationally, through a better understanding of disease and healthcare systems.

SwissTPH had no way to monitor the diagnoses and treatments of sick children in Nigeria in real-time.

To analyze disease patterns across health facilities, SwissTPH researchers would have to wait days until staff members exported, cleaned, and uploaded the diagnoses data collected to DHIS2—a time-consuming data process, prone to human error.

OpenFn helps to bridge the time gap between data collection and analysis.

OpenFn eliminates time lags, saving SwissTPH money and time and sending critical patient information where and when it is needed, faster. By integrating a CommCare mobile data collection app with a national DHIS2 reporting system for the ALMANACH health initiative, OpenFn has provided SwissTPH with an automated, real-time connection that enables live disease monitoring.

Every day the OpenFn automated reporting solution delivers 300 beneficiary case updates and logs events with 100 individual “data elements” in DHIS2. The solution runs on Switzerland-based cloud servers to ensure compliance with SwissTPH’s data residency concerns.

The photo above was originally posted on the SwissTPH News site. The Almanach tablet-based decision support tool supports health workers in diagnosing and treating sick children. OpenFn integrates this data with DHIS2 for real-time reporting.