After more than three years testing innovative solutions for digital health, our Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Community Health Innovation Network wrapped up in Q1. Established in September 2017, the Innovation Network supported the development and testing of six cutting-edge human-centered digital solutions that leveraged Living Goods’ experience designing, testing, and launching new digital tools at the last mile. Working with Medic Mobile as our primary partner in the first phase, we tested:

• Closed Loop Referrals – We tested how to digitize the community health referral system and ensure a feedback loop was established between community-level and facility-level care.
• Community-Based HIV Self-Testing and Counseling – We tested the feasibility of conducting HIV tests at home.
• Predictive Analytics – We explored the possibility of building an algorithm that could help predict at-risk households, including newborns and children at-risk of developing danger signs and/or expectant mothers least likely to deliver at a health facility.

Under Phase 2 of the program, the Innovation Network team brought on board additional partners with a more aggressive approach to enhancing health care at the community level, including ThinkMD and Praekelt. Our studies included:

• Data Ecosystem Support Initiative (DESI)—This initiative set out to develop an analytical data repository, explore community-based disease surveillance, and build dashboards for maternal and child health and COVID that would support insight generation and decision-making.
• Client Initiated Health Assessment (CIHA) —We explored how to increase health-seeking behaviors at the community level by introducing an SMS and WhatsApp-based self-assessment tool.
• Virtual Design Lab (vLab) —We helped develop a set of virtual tools based on human-centered design methods to ensure clients remains at the core of the design process, despite the limitations of COVID presented to field access and direct face-to-face engagement.

In our final collaborative workshop with key project partners, we surfaced a set of strategic insights and lessons, which included: