Prime Protocol

Prime Protocol is a collaboration between government and private sector to strengthen systems to collect, track, and analyze disease data using a “One Health” approach—a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach to complex health problems that cut across human health, animal health, and environmental sectors. 

Blessing Mene (CEO, Vetsark)

Nigeria has a GDP of $448.1 billion (World Bank), the largest in Africa, all thanks to the contribution of a vast population of 206 million people. Agriculture in Nigeria feeds its populace, sustains public health, employs two-thirds of the entire labor force, and contributes 21.9% to the nation's GDP.

The BIG problem is that the growth of Nigeria's economy, public health as well as it's agricultural sector remain threatened and heavily constrained by the widespread prevalence of diseases in humans, animals, and the environment. 

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a weakness we all knew to be true - Nigeria as well as other African countries do not have the economic firepower, health infrastructure, and preparedness to effectively identify, prevent and manage the next pandemic. 

Even worse is the fact that the Federal Government whom citizens rely on for their public health, still cannot forecast disease outbreaks, it tracks disease outbreaks manually and most times too late. 

The root cause of this problem is the absence of a comprehensive and digital health data infrastructure that could potentially help public health authorities to easily understand disease prevalence levels, quickly identify disease hotspots and quickly target their interventions to affected communities.

1. Public health authorities from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment, and the Nigerian Center for Disease Control. Through a series of meetings and design thinking activities, our team has interviewed key members, gained deep insight into their needs, and identified unaddressed gaps. In addition to a strong emphasis on a “one health” approach towards disease surveillance, there is also a high demand for primary data which is logistically expensive and hard to collect from grassroots public and private organizations, most of whom are accustomed to traditional “pen and paper” medical record-keeping systems. Over the last 12 months, we have closely worked with selected stakeholders in an official capacity to organize, develop and upgrade their disease information systems at a state and national level. 

2. Public and private health organizations including human hospitals, veterinary clinics, farms, laboratories, and research organizations: From our design thinking activities, interviews, and meetings with this category of beneficiaries, we have noted a willingness to support and comply with the data request from public health authorities, but there is still an unaddressed gap as to who bears the cost of (a) digitalizing their record-keeping system (b) capacity building for their staff and management. 

Prime Protocol provides three tangible “public good”:

1. Prime Protocol EMR for Private Practitioners: This component will be available for free to hospitals, laboratories, research organizations etc, and will be globally accessible under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. This public good approach incentivizes private practitioners to contribute anonymized epidemiological data while using this comprehensive software to boost their own productivity and ability to digitally collect, track and analyze their own private clinical and financial transaction data. For larger-scale organizations that would prefer to use a more customized version, the product will be provided to them at cost and all income will be reinvested back into Prime Protocol

2. Prime Protocol for Public Health Authorities: The free-to-use dashboard and platform will be made openly available to public health authorities in Nigeria

3. Other nations, especially those under the African Union charter can freely use Prime Protocol to set up their own national disease surveillance and prediction programs.

4. The public community benefits from greater health security in Nigeria, and Africa, due to the proper monitoring and tracking of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases, thereby, maximizing the “One Health” goal of enhancing public health surveillance and disease control.

Prime Protocol creates tangible impact for public health authorities and private organizations by:

1. Digitalizing public health data in Nigeria and making it available on a dashboard.

2. Helping public health authorities to identify, forecast, and prevent the spillover events and the consequent spread of diseases from animals to consumers (zoonosis).

3. Supporting government and private hospitals, veterinary clinics, and laboratories with a comprehensive and free-to-use dashboard and electronic medical records (EMR).

4. Reducing the cost burden and alleviating the bureaucratic difficulty associated with implementing Prime Protocol independently.

5. Bringing the human, health, and environmental sectors to collaborate and co-create interventions under a “one-health” model.

Prime Protocol will create tangible impact for the general public health by:

1. Completely transforming the health, environmental and agricultural industry and their impact on public health.

2. Shining a spotlight on marginalized and rural communities where the risk of infection through zoonoses is particularly high as they are more in close contact with wild animals or livestock. Unfortunately, zoonoses affecting these local communities are not assigned a defined control or prevention program in the nation’s healthcare scheme due to the under-reporting of case numbers and under-estimation of the economic and health impact of these diseases. Prime Protocol will significantly change this narrative.

To scale our impact in one year, Prime Protocol technology will be formally collaborated and distributed in close collaboration with the Federal Government of Nigeria - and its corresponding Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, and Health. This approach will ensure that Prime Protocol reaches the 36 states of Nigeria and directly impacts:

1. 1,000 hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and pharmacies.

2. 100 million + livestock, fish, and poultry.

3. The livelihoods of ~10,000farmers.

4. The lives of over 100million Nigerians who consume products from farms.

To scale our impact in three years, Prime Protocol will formally collaborate with the African Union to identify and engage member countries who are looking to adopt digital technology and data platform like Prime Protocol for their nation’s digital health infrastructure. For instance, we plan to leverage the new relationships we build with Advisors/Partners of the Trinity Challenge program to reach out to the World Health Organization, and World Animal Health Organization - two influential bodies that play a key role in promoting the “one health” approach. We expect to directly impact

1. 10,000 hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and pharmacies .

2. 1 billion + livestock, fish, and poultry.

3. The livelihoods of ~500,000farmers.

4. The lives of over 400million Nigerians who consume products from farms.

To monitor and evaluate the impact of our solution, we will use the following specific indicators:

1. Public health: Number of people who benefit from prevention measures implemented due to our disease forecast model and work. Our past performance on this metrics = ~1,000,000 people

2. Lives saved: Number of human lives saved by location/region due to the impact of our work.  Our past performance on this metrics = ~1,000,000 people

3. Disease Tracking: Number of diseases successfully identified, tracked, and published.  

4. Disease Traceability: Number of humans, livestock, transboundary and zoonotic diseases tracked by location, species type, and health status.

5. Antimicrobial resistance: Number of morbidity and mortality prevented + amount of money saved by farmers who benefit from this data. 

6. Job creation/increased income: Number of doctors, health professionals veterinarians, environmentalists, and animal scientists engaged. Based on our proof of concept, we have created opportunities for 70 individuals.

The specific barriers that currently exist to accomplishing our goals in the next one year and the next three years include:

1. Financial: Our team does not have the financial wherewithal to cover the cost of implementing this project. Similarly, due to limited funding available, local private and public organizations do not yet finance these forward-thinking innovations. A minimum fund of $500,000 will help Prime Protocol to be viable in its first 12-18 months. We will work to secure philanthropic, grant, and impact investment support to help cover the cost of this project.

2. Technical: While our team has a broad range of technical skills needed to successfully bring this project to life, we are eager to get additional technical and advisory support especially from mentors, partners, experts, and stakeholders.

3. Market/Policy: While we have a number of credible relationships with stakeholders in the veterinary community, we also want to ensure that we will have this goodwill with the human medical community. One way we plan to solve this is through leveraging relationships gained via Trinity Challenge advisors/partners and cross parastatal/direct introductions via public and private officials who share a mutual relationship between both parties.

1. Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

2. Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement (REDISSE) II Project.

3. Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD).

4. The Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association (NVMA).

5. The World Bank's Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement, and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) Project, Lagos.

6. Google.org (Past Funder).

I am applying to the Trinity Challenge for the following reasons:

1. Access to technical and advisory support from Trinity Partners. For Vetsark, this is perhaps the most important resource as it would enable us connect with the right people and organizations who can truly help us overcome gaps in knowledge, field experience, and technical capacity.

2. Access to financial capital will help us lift the barriers we would not have been able to cross without initial funding. Our mission is one that many traditional investors/banks still do not fully comprehend. As a result we plan on raising additional financial support from donors and impact investors who believe in our mission and goals. This way we can keep Prime Protocol sustainable.

3. Network and connection to country-level partners who can open doors for Vetsark to properly collaborate with stakeholders, users and effectively execute Prime Protocol in Nigeria and other African countries

1. Google | Microsoft | Palantir | Facebook: Provide access to their staff/team's technical support; and access to their cloud and machine learning tools and infrastructure, which are extremely reliable, secure and beneficial to Prime Protocol. We also want to receive some additional "credits or coupon" sponsorship from them to finance or relieve part of the financial burden of building, hosting and maintaining Prime Protocol.

2. University of Cambridge | LSE | McKinsey | Imperial College London: Provide technical support (and PhD/MSc student interns) that would help us effectively plan and assess the social impact of the project; effectively plan and achieve sustainability of Prime Protocol; develop the appropriate mechanisms and documentation needed to publish scientific or peer review articles, tell our project's story better; and improve the accuracy, type and quality of data and data types collected and tracked under this project.

3. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | SWISS Re | RB : To learn from their vast wealth of lessons/insights - specifically understanding interventions that scale and how they achieve it. Secondly, to leverage their broad  network in Africa. Thirdly, build a relationship with them that may give us access to future funding when we scale.