M'Care Compass

Prior to COVID-19, there had been a global shortage of healthcare workers; with rural communities in low income countries suffering a dearth of medical doctors and a poor health system. COVID-19 has made this even worse with over 115,000 deaths amongst healthcare workers according to May 2021 report by World Health Organization. 

Limited healthcare workers in the face of a pandemic, an overburdened health system and far flung geographical location of rural communities means access to primary healthcare particularly to prevent and arrest the spread of a potential outbreak is constrained.

M'Care Compass, an AI SuperApp, empowers community health volunteers to detect, diagnose, treat and limit the spread of diseases and outbreaks in rural communities. M'Care connects to healthcare systems, alerting disease control centers of index outbreak cases using its geo-location feature. M'Care Compass would bridge the health and epidemic resilience gap for three billion rural dwellers if scaled globally.

Prior to COVID-19, there had been a global shortage of healthcare workers; with rural communities in low income countries suffering a dearth of medical doctors and ineffective health system. COVID-19 has made this even worse with over 115,000 deaths amongst healthcare workers according to May 2021 report by World Health Organization. 

Limited healthcare workers in the face of a pandemic, an overburdened health system and far flung geographical location of rural communities means access to primary healthcare particularly to prevent and arrest the spread and re-occurrence of outbreaks is constrained. 

Furthermore, low income, rural communities have poor communication networks, poor road networks and no direct access to Disease control centers; making top-down coordination of outbreak and epidemic control ineffective. 

M'Care Compass is an effective and efficient ground-up solution that leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mobile connectivity to detect, diagnose, treat and limit the spread of common primary care and infectious diseases in rural communities, preventing outbreaks and epidemics. It has a geo-location feature to identify index cases of infectious diseases that could lead to outbreaks and alerts the disease control centers in each state to effect appropriate quarantine measures. 

M'Care Compass is available to networks of verified and trained mobile community health volunteers and workers resident in the communities they serve to ensure effective coverage of communities at risk. 

M'Care Compass is designed to reach rural communities with

1) no medical personnel

2) limited or no access to the primary health system

3) poor road networks which classifies them as hard-to-reach

4) low income; indigent population of at least 200 people

5) high risk of reoccurring outbreaks 

6) at least one verified community health worker or volunteer

7) receptive and supporting community driven structures

We uncovered the fit of M'Care Compass for these communities through a mix of ethnographic research, quantitative surveys and focus groups with community heads, healthcare stakeholders in primary healthcare system and community health workers with firsthand experience working in these communities. M'Care Compass, through her networks of verified and trained community health workers or volunteers, provide primary healthcare, address misinformation and limit spread of outbreaks in these communities. 

M'Care Compass aligns to this challenge because

 It equips last mile community health workers or volunteers with an AI SuperApp tool and a mobile library of training content to detect disease outbreak quickly and respond effectively using her rules based expert system of treatment.

It strengthens disease surveillance, being an early warning predictive system that detects using her geo-location feature and halts future disease outbreaks by transmitting index case information to disease control centers. 

It prevents the spread of misinformation and inspires individuals to protect their communities through information campaigns and behavioral nudges by locally resident and trusted community health volunteers.

M'Care has been deployed in multiple communities of Ogun (81 communities), Gombe (134 communities) and currently Kwara States (107 communities) of Nigeria reaching a collective population of 1,818,942. 

Each community has a community health worker or volunteer we work with.

M'Care Compass receives 15 to 20 case requests daily per community or community health worker/volunteer.

M'Care Compass, a C Language integrated production system with knowledge represented in rules (including an explanation system and inference engine) is an improved version of M'Care mobile solution. M'Care Compass offers 5 core functionalities absent in prior version which allows contextualization, scalability and adaptability to different geographies and users. They are: 

1) a mobile library of training content for community health workers or volunteers; negating the need for in-person training on use of M'Care's AI solution. Once training content is completed, it unlocks access to M'Care AI the expert system for detecting, diagnosing, treating and limiting the spread of diseases and outbreaks.

2) a compass which is the geo-location or coordinate-enabled tracking feature of patient requests, work flows and treatments in every community with time stamps. The compass allows each index case of a disease or possible outbreak to be detected and transmitted. It is linked to a master dashboard for transmission of identified diseases of public health concern (highly contagious/outbreak inducing) to be reported to the response team in a disease control center.  

3) the medication tracker which is a record of all administered medications by a community health worker or volunteer. It is useful for planning restocking especially because last mile logistics of medicines is a huge challenge for rural communities.

4) a user interface now available both offline and online on fixed devices making it hyper relevant for poor internet settings.

5) an editable knowledge base which allows feedback loops to continuously improve its AI's effectiveness.

Currently we reach of 1.8 million people across 322 communities in 3 states.

In one year we aim to double this number to 3.6 million people and

 in 5 years reach 50 million people. 

INDICATORS WE USE

Number of community health workers or volunteers trained and using M'Care Compass (currently 322)  SDG 9c

Percentage of community health workers or volunteer using M'Care Compass without prior digital skills (48%) SDG 9c

Daily usage rate by case requests per community health worker or volunteer (SDG 3.4; 3.8) currently 15 to 20 cases per day depending on region

Percentage change in number of out-of-stock request for medicines using M'Care Compass supply chain planning (SDG 3.4, 3.8, 3b)

Number of contagion detected; reported and responded to within 12hrs, 24hrs and 72hrs (SDG 3.3, 3d)

Resolution rate of contagion within 72hrs (SDG 3.3; 3d)

Number of river communities prone to flooding using M'Care Compass for improved resilience during emergencies (SDG 11.5- currently 8 communities)

Number of communities using M’Care Compass as its main health system (322) directly contributes to SDG 9.4.

Number of partnering organizations supporting M'Care's deployment in developing countries (SDG 17) = 7

M'Care Compass is the digital health solution owned by Promane and Promade Limited the legal entity which operates as a social enterprise. 

Full time Staff= 30; Part time Staff= 10

Our team represents a diverse range of skills in Behavioral science, Medical Science and Public health, Pharmacy and Supply Chain management, Software engineering, data science, epidemiology, finance and linguists. The broad range gives us a healthy balance of skills for design thinking in ethnography, public health agility, technology adaptation and business modelling. 

We commit to 100% indigenous teams in recruitment of our staff and at least 40% women in leadership team. We are committed to equal pay for similar work irrespective of gender.

We are looking to expand our partners and access new markets were M'Care Compass will be useful. We value the reach of Solve and hope to leverage that to grow our network of partners. Furthermore, we hope the visibility being a Solver gives will expose us to the right impact investors and donors to fund M'Care Compass. Also, we are looking for technology partnerships that help improve M'Care Compass supply chain tracking capabilities and efficiency as the largest part of her monthly burn rate is investments in medicines distribution. 

1) Public relations to gain more exposure to impact investors as we provide service in a niche market

2) Product/Service distribution to new markets through partnerships especially where cultural and market barrier may hinder us from entering

3) Technology that can be integrated into M'Care Compass for efficient supply chain management of medicines to reduces waste in medicine supply chain by at least 20%.  

MIT Technology teams

Market Access programs and partnerships to Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India and Indonesia.

Philanthropists and Impact Investors

100% of our community health workers and volunteers are females. Through M'Care we provide them with decent and dignified work that increases their value in the communities they work. M'Care Compass doubles the income to levels above the $2 a day for them to earn a sustainable living. Furthermore, 45% of them learn a basic digital skill for the first time when they engage with M'Care Compass training. Also, we emphasize gender equity in leadership team with 50% of our senior management being female and 100% female ownership of the business entity. 

Finally, 71% of M'Care Compass beneficiary cases treated relates to women, maternal health and child care; women are disproportionately affected by potential outbreaks and contagious diseases. 

M'Care Compass core technology is an AI expert system for medical diagnosis furthering the adoption of AI as part of healthcare infrastructure.

The AI for Humanity Prize will help us continue to expand access to our AI Infrastructure for resilient and efficient prevention and management of outbreaks in rural communities.

M'Care Compass currently tracks and manages supply chain of medicines and medical consumables to last mile rural communities to ensure adequate access to medicines for complete care coverage. It has a medication tracker feature which is a record of all administered medications by a community health worker or volunteer. It is useful for planning, re-stocking especially because last mile logistics of medicines is a huge challenge for rural communities. Part of our key performance indicators is the frequency of out-of-stock medicines for primary healthcare ailments like malaria and diseases of public health concerns like HIV and Tuberculosis. 

The global fund prize will help us improve our medication tracker for supply chain management efficiency which accounts for the largest cost in our monthly expense.