Project Lead(s): James Fraser
Issue
Access to decentralized diagnostics can save millions of lives globally, yet the lack of supervision and training opportunities for overburdened nurses and community health workers in remote settings can negatively affect quality of testing and care.
Solution
ChipCare is a Toronto-based social enterprise developing a simple-to-use, extremely mobile, laboratory-quality, blood-testing platform for community-level health workers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The first test will count CD4 cells, to link HIV+ people to treatment. Future tests will focus on infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The aim of the current project was to develop a two-way, cloud-based network connectivity system that could provide remote quality control to testing, disease training and clinical support, and capture important data for program and health systems managers.
Outcome
ChipCare successfully developed key components of the two-way, cloud-based network connectivity system, including:
1. Communication hardware design and implementation
2. Supporting firmware and application software development: The team developed firmware to support the hardware design and front-end application software, to support remote locking/unlocking and quality control of the analyzer via wireless communication protocols, as well as user-programmable software, designed to collect patient-related data for remote patient monitoring and clinical support.
The team intends to apply for Phase II Transition To Scale funding to scale the innovation.
The project team has moved away from working with one specific country partner (Nairobi) to working with the actual members of the World Health Organization (WHO) working group on point-of-care (POC) connectivity, for defining the technical and data management requirements for the system.