The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) were seeking to trial the WHO TB Tracker DHIS2 module and automate the collection of test data using connected diagnostics. Given our current presence with the AMR One Health projects, Zambia and Rwanda were chosen as countries to run this trial. Both countries would like to roll this solution out into a countrywide deployment.
In Zambia the existing infrastructure was leveraged to deploy an additional DHIS2 instance- the NTP had not yet used the WHO TB Tracker and were keen to explore this solution. We implemented a utility on tablets and deployed these to three sites (as an initial trial) to enable connection to the GeneXpert devices; this utility forwarded the data into the in-country Open Interop deployment. Open Interop applied a mapping in order to transmit the data into the in-country DHIS2 instance, which runs the WHO TB Tracker as well as the generic Diagnostic Sample dataset.
The NTP now have access to timely information regarding their testing and how the labs are performing in the different locations. Each tablet can be supported remotely by the team using an MDM provider so that users can monitor each site to ensure it stays connected.
The Zambia and Rwanda Connected TB projects were a collaboration between the Software for Health Foundation, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, the World Health Organisation, eSHIFT Partner Network, and Blue Frontier IT Ltd.