Living Goods will receive computing credits and customized expertise from Amazon’s cloud computing arm to enhance community-based disease surveillance  

Washington, DC (2/1/21) — Today Living Goods announced it has been selected for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Diagnostic Development Initiative, a global program focused on accelerating research and innovation to advance the collective understanding and detection of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Through the initiative, AWS – Amazon’s cloud computing arm – provides computing credits and customized expertise from the AWS Professional Services team to support customers using the cloud to drive diagnostic innovations. The initiative supports projects in four program areas: early disease detection, diagnostics, prognosis, and public health genomics.

The support from AWS will advance Living Goods’ efforts to develop a robust community-based early detection and warning system that leverages the smart phone mHealth technology widely used by community health workers (CHWs) and their supervisors. Living Goods will pilot this project with 100 sentinel CHWs in Kenya strategically selected based on risk zones to report public health threats and events. By collecting individual and aggregate data on public health threats, and triangulating it with other data sources, decision-makers will be better enabled to view and respond to health crises. CHWs will signal if there is a risk of an outbreak and visit potential hotspots in their communities so that program leadership can determine what actions need to be taken. Once this pilot is taken to scale, Living Goods will be able to leverage its entire network of 12,000 CHWs across Kenya and Uganda to expand countries’ capacities for community-based disease surveillance.

Kenya was chosen for this pilot since its Ministry of Health (MoH) highlighted improved community-based disease surveillance (CBDS) as a priority in its National Community Health Digitization Strategy 2020-2025. Living Goods is a key partner in operationalizing this strategy, which is expected to digitize and effectively support all 95,000 CHWs in the country by 2025 through the establishment of a robust Community Health Information System (eCHIS). This will equip the entire nation’s CHWs with a robust digital tool based on Living Goods’ Smart Health application. Living Goods will integrate CBDS into the suite of tools we’re helping the MOH establish in its eCHIS rollout.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with AWS to advance our efforts to ensure CHWs are essential players in CBDS and can equip government with the insights they need to effectively prevent and respond to health crises,” said Liz Jarman, CEO of Living Goods. “The COVID crisis has underscored just how essential CHWs are both in preventing disease outbreak and ensuring an effective response, all while maintaining critical life-saving primary care services.”

Since its launch in March 2020, the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative has helped more than 85 organizations around the world, ranging from nonprofits and research institutions to startups and large businesses. AWS intends to distribute $12 million in support this year to organizations worldwide through this program. To learn more, visit: www.aws.amazon.com/ddi.

“Cloud-powered diagnostic tools are critical in the fight against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases,” said Maggie Carter, Global Lead, Social Impact at AWS. “Since its launch in early 2020, AWS has seen inspirational results from the Diagnostic Development Initiative. We look forward to helping Living Goods and other organizations worldwide use the cloud to mitigate current and future infectious disease outbreaks.”

About Living Goods

Living Goods is a non-profit organization that saves lives at scale by supporting digitally empowered community health workers (CHWs) who deliver care on call—making it easy for families in need to get the care they need. Beginning its operations in Uganda in 2007 and expanding into Kenya in 2015, Living Goods works with governments and partners to ensure community health workers have access to the digital technology, medical treatments, supervision, and compensation to cost-effectively deliver high quality, impactful health services. By Q3 2021, Living Goods was supporting more than 12,000 CHWs in Kenya and Uganda to deliver care to more than 9 million people.  Learn more at www.livinggoods.org

Press Contact: For more information, please contact Living Goods’ Director of Communications Jennifer Hyman at jhyman@livinggoods.org