Minutes of the Meeting

August 13, 2024

Agenda

To present the Health Campaign Management product roadmap and identify the pain points currently associated with conducting health campaigns in Africa.

Meeting Attendees

Name	Key Expertise	Organization
Marcy Erskine	Malaria Advisor	Alliance for Malaria Prevention
Robert Opoku	Project Management	Alliance for Malaria Prevention
Elijah Egwu	Digital Health Advisor	Catholic Relief Services
Lakshmi Balachandran	Digital Health Specialist	Clinton Health Access Initiative
Abhishek Suresh	Product Management	eGov Foundation
Jojo Mehra	Product Management	eGov Foundation
Nita Tyagi	Partnerships & Growth	eGov Foundation
Varun Basu	Partnerships & Growth	eGov Foundation
Satish Choudhury	Digital Health Specialist	Gates Foundation
Sidharth Rupani	Supply Chain Design	Global Fund
Liberty Bunce	Digital Health Specialist	Malaria Consortium
Tom Heslop	Malaria Programme Operations	Malaria Consortium
Ravi Shankar	GIS Expert	WHO - GIS Center for Health

Discussions

SL No.	Topic	Discussion	Participant
1	Attendance management	Additional method to prove the identity of the person giving attendance using QR code/IDs	Liberty, Elijah, Jojo, Abhishek, Satish
2	Attendance management	Easier and quicker user creation and access management	Elijah, Jojo, Abhishek
3	Attendance management	Attendance management on field for quicker response to changes in teams	Elijah, Jojo, Abhishek
4	Login credentials	Possibility of scanning QR codes instead of usernames for access	Elijah, Jojo, Abhishek
5	Bale scanning	Bale scanning operational issues in Liberia	Marcy, Nita, Jojo, Sid
6	Voucher scanning	Voucher scanning issues in Liberia	Marcy, Jojo
7	Voucher scanning	Tracking all vouchers procured for campaign in the system	Elijah, Marcy,Jojo
8	GIS	Improve GIS accuracy	Ravi, Jojo, Abhishek

Key Discussions in Proceedings

1. Introduction and context setting by Jojo

a. Proposal to conduct this meeting once a quarter, with the next one hopefully in person.

b. SMC and Bednet Campaigns have been conducted so far, with IRS, LF, and Polio campaigns to be conducted in the coming months.

2. Product Roadmap Walkthrough by Abhishek

a. Discussion of existing HCM capabilities as well as planned capabilities to be added over the following months.

3. Attendance Management, presented by Abhishek

a. Liberty outlined the importance of preventing fraud, and stressed the need for an additional method to prove the identity of the person giving attendance, In addition to a simple yes/no, perhaps IDs could be involved in attendance taking as well.

b. Elijah brought up the need for a user creation and access management feature.

• Jojo responded that this feature is coming up in the admin console.

c. Elijah suggested scanning a QR code as proof of ID for taking attendance. This would help in fraud prevention.

• Jojo responded that this could be done for attendance at a solution level.

d. Elijah also suggested using QR codes as a form of identification, instead of usernames and passwords. The printed QR code would provide login credentials. This would solve the need for teams to converge at a central location at the end of the day for attendance-taking.

• Jojo agreed that this is something we need to understand further.

e. Elijah also brought up the need to be able to edit and add records of campaign participants. Currently, the central team has to add the records of the replacements for participants who drop out. Names are misspelled as well.

• Abhishek stated that this is possible and would reach out to Elijah

f. Satish wanted a follow-up meeting on attendance capabilities.

4. Code Scanning, presented by Abhishek

a. Sid stated that a lot of the input is going to be upstream or downstream of the technical system and that it would be useful to understand both sides of it.

• Jojo suggested a follow-up call with Sid to understand this further.

b. Marcy stated that there have been operational issues involved in bale scanning in Liberia, starting with training. A further deep dive is needed to discuss this.

c. Bale scanning conversation to be orchestrated by Nita.

5. Voucher Scanning, presented by Abhishek

a. Marcy stated that control of the vouchers had been lost in Liberia. Vouchers were unused in the field because no one knew who they were meant for. There was little visibility on what had been sent to districts, issued to supervisors, issued to households, and remained to be collected and returned. This needs to be addressed going forward in Liberia and in Burundi.

b. Nita added that sometimes people did not have voucher details and hence were denied bednets.

c. In response to Marcy, Elijah stated that it was an implementation issue in Liberia. There is scope to improve voucher management, for example, tracking all vouchers in the system. This way, vouchers could be shipped and tracked to their respective points of issuance .

d. Elijah brought out the need for guidance on the use of each functionality. The outcome of not following the prescribed SOP needs to be stated at each stage of the product.

e. Jojo mentioned that the SOPs need to be adhered to. For instance, when vouchers are issued, the SOP to collect the vouchers after handing over the bednets needs to be followed, or else there is a likelihood of bednets being delivered against the same voucher more than once.

6. Location Accuracy and GIS Dashboard, presented by Abhishek

a. Jojo called for participants' opinions on what distance they felt constituted a good level of accuracy. Currently, 94% of geo-coordinates are accurate within 20 meters, and almost 80% are within 5-10 meters.

b. Ravi stated that 5-10 meters constituted a great level of accuracy and that there are constraints on the level of accuracy that can be obtained due to structures, trees, etc. Coordinates could be aggregated together on a grid and displayed in dashboards. The value of the programme comes from both spatial and non-spatial data. Furthermore, only clustered data is released since countries have shown resistance to releasing individual-level data.

c. Ravi also spoke of the need to have baseline data like imagery, building footprints, etc., and stated that this should be the future focus. This data would help in time analysis to answer questions such as which areas have a shortage of bednets or what is the optimal coverage for delivery centers.

d. Ravi put forth the need to build a culture with the enumerators on the accuracy of data capture. Accuracy would be better with towers and is often limited to 10-20 meters because there are no towers nearby to triangulate coordinates. Another problem is that when people get into a house and start the survey, the walls obscure the signal.

f. Ravi brought out the value of GIS data both when taking micro-level decisions regarding operations and at a higher level among decision-makers. The value provided would be diminished if the GIS data could not be obtained in a timely manner.