Crowdsourcing Disease Surveillance

Monitoring disease outbreaks requires resources and prompt notification. In many low resource areas these resources may be lacking. By crowdsourcing disease surveillance, we leverage the engagement of large crowds to quickly locate and analyse outbreaks. Our solution is the Hudibia app currently available free for all smartphones. It allows anyone with a smartphone and the Hudibia app installed to notify public health officials of disease outbreaks in their location. With analysis and confirmation of these outbreaks public health officials can notify all users in that location, using our app. Notification includes both location of disease and information advice that is translated into location languages. Access is also provided to requisite specialists that treat the disease. This solution has the potential to vastly improve management of public health emergencies in Nigeria and worldwide

Disease surveillance in Nigeria currently uses a paper-based system filled by healthcare professionals and collated in local governments with onwards transmission to the federal ministry of health. However, uptake by healthcare facilities is very low. A recent study in Northeast Nigeria showed that only 23% of Public health facilities and 3.3% of private health facilities engaged in any reporting at all. Although its being digitised and streamlined with enhanced response by public health professionals, it is still cumbersome and has limited engagement of the public at large. The Hudibia app aims to streamline and expedite the process by enabling disease reporting by the public. With this crowdsourcing approach it extends the reach of disease reporting but also improves community engagement and facilitates dissemination of public health awareness and information about disease outbreaks

Our solution is a free medical super app called Hudibia. It is available for most modern smartphone and we are currently planning to extend some of its feature to regular cell phone using USSD. It is a digital health assistant designed to provide a holistic care from health awareness and information to personalised treatment. Its key features include video consulting, drug ordering and delivery, ambulance request and access to licensed medical doctors. For medical doctors it is an indispensable tool for patient care that provides a drug database and clinical guidelines that aids in clinical decision making.

Our built-in crowdsourcing feature for disease surveillance allows anyone with the Hudibia app to report disease outbreak of public health significance. To report a disease you open the app and click on report disease feature to enter disease with associated features. Indicate if diagnosed by a doctor whose details you include. This information is transmitted to a central database where public health officials access it in real time and proceed to investigate and confirm outbreaks. Officials can send instant notification of confirmed outbreaks including advice.  The advice has audio translations in local languages for users who may not be able to read.

There is no service at the moment in Nigeria that allows crowdsourcing of disease surveillance in Nigeria. The current system is implemented by healthcare professionals and is grossly under-utilised. Disease notification in Nigeria has however undergone dramatic improvements in recent years in Nigeria with SMS messaging extending the reach of messaging. However, our solution greatly enhances these existing solutions with the addition of audio translations of advice into local languages.

Our solution is designed for anyone with a smartphone. It is currently mainly used in Nigeria. As a crowdsourcing project its utility is enhanced as the number of those using it increases. Our aim is for its ubiquitous use across Nigeria and Africa. This will allow prompt detection of disease outbreak patterns and provides a channel for the immediate alert of population about outbreaks. We currently have over 3000 users and are running pilot studies in the Lagos metropolis in Nigeria.

It is particularly targeted at the underserved population. This is why we are extending our solution to regular cell phones via USSD. We also intend to extend our services by providing mobile health units that allow access to some of our services without the necessity of owning a smartphone.

Our proposal is a direct and literal solution to the challenge. Our solution strengthen disease surveillance by extending its reach, incorporating crowdsourcing of surveillance. Because the community engaged is directly involved and present at the time of outbreak it has the potential to improve early warning predictive systems

The Hudibia app is currently at pilot stage in Lagos Nigeria. We have 3000 users and 500 medical doctors registered on the platform

There are various innovative elements to the Hudibia. Our approach of developing a super app flies in the face of the concept of minimal viable product and creates an integrated ecosystem of medical functionalities that allows convenient access to most healthcare needs. Our audio language translation of health advice is unique and innovative amongst medical apps. As a tool in public health it has the capacity to improve health awareness by providing standardised health information especially in multilingual societies like Nigeria where language barriers may impede dissemination of health information. Our decision to use the smartphone as crowdsourcing tool for disease surveillance is an innovative approach that will only get better as smartphone use continues to increase.

We currently serve 3196 users and 512 Doctors. We project that in One year we will be serving 50,000 users and 1,200 Doctors. In 5 year we project that we will be serving 500,000 users and 4,000 Doctors.

We currently use surveys to analyse satisfaction with our platform and assess the impact of our awareness campaigns on the target population. As we scale up our services we will be monitoring the impact of our platform on broader health indictors like morbidity/mortality using administrative databases. Other key indicators we will be monitoring to assess the impact of our solution include: Ease of access to available health services, patient experience and performance improvement benchmarks.

2 Full time

1 Part time

2 Contractors

Our team is uniquely positioned to deliver this solution because the professional experiences skills and life experiences are complimentary and crucial for achieving our goal. Our founder, Ahjoku Amadi-Obi is a medical doctor with professional experience spanning Africa Europe and USA. He coordinated disease control campaigns in Nigeria before moving to Ireland where his experience in Emergency medicine will be crucial in setting up the ambulance system. His experience in telemedicine as a research fellow in the royal college of surgeons in Ireland provided both the experience and inspiration for founding Hudibia. Tony Udomiaye, is a digital marketing specialist who will drive the expansion of our user base. 

Our software development is currently done by contract staff

Nigeria is a diverse multi-ethnic society. To achieve an effective provision of healthcare delivery at the scale we require an inclusive diverse and equitable workforce. We are particularly cognisant of the role women play in the health of our society so we believe that adequate female representation in our workforce is essential in achieving our goal.

I applied to Solve because I hope to get the invaluable mentorship program develop a network of innovators, gain media exposure and access funding for my project

My background is in Medical practice research and telemedicine. In other to actualise my vision of developing a digital health assistant I will need to partner with experts in marketing business development and service distribution

We seek partnership with existing healthcare organisation in Nigeria to develop an integrated health system.

We hope to partner with MIT to develop our organisation and create a marketing strategy

Our solution will be particularly useful in enhancing health delivery amongst the internally displaced people in north east Nigeria who are affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Our solution is a tool that is very useful to healthcare workers. Our reporting system can be modified to enhance supply chain services