The Helium Health Data Network

We are committed to solving the problem of limited access to and utilization of healthcare data in Africa. Digitizing health records/processes at every level of healthcare delivery is critical in creating a solid health information system, and we have spent years building our core solution -- the HeliumEMR. It is the foundation on which we have built other products, such as simplifying healthcare financing and our proposed solution, the Helium Data Network.

The Helium Health Data Network securely aggregates millions of standardized, anonymized health data points from diverse health sources. Accessible via standards-based API or our data exploration tool, the Helium Data Network facilitates precise analyses for real-world evidence and better decision-making for all healthcare stakeholders. 

When scaled and combined with big data analytics tools, our solution has the potential to usher in a new era of transformative health applications, precision public health solutions, and personalized health services.

A myriad of challenges face healthcare in Africa - 400 million people with little to no access to health services, poor life expectancy, high child and maternal mortality - can be solved when robust healthcare data is collected, and data-driven solutions are developed. Unfortunately, healthcare data in Africa is fragmented and trapped in paper.

Despite the encouraging prevalence of community health worker (CHW) applications in countries like Kenya, the growing adoption of open-source electronic medical records (EMR) solutions, and the implementation of National Health Management Information Systems (e.g., DHIS2) in countries like Kenya and Nigeria, the utilization of data is still limited. Health information systems used by secondary and tertiary hospitals remain siloed from each other and CHW apps, truncating longitudinal patient information that could enhance clinical assessment. Data from private health facilities, which serve 60% of Nigeria’s population, make up less than 10% of the data collected by DHIS2.

Therefore, at any given time, significant swarths of data are missing from our understanding of healthcare on the continent. These reporting gaps impede the thorough analysis and use of data and exclude a significant portion of the population from government and donor-funded efforts to improve health outcomes.

Our solution securely aggregates and connects millions of standardized, anonymized health data points from diverse health sources, including health facilities (private & public), CHW apps, and insurance companies. It facilitates precise analyses for real-world evidence and better decision-making for all healthcare stakeholders. When combined with big data analytics tools, the HH Data Network has the potential to usher in a new era of transformative health applications, precision public health solutions, and personalized health services.

The HH Data network is built on our foundational HeliumEMR solution, a reimagined EMR/HMIS software used in hundreds of health facilities across 7 countries, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon, Senegal, Kenya, and Uganda. Our EMR product surfaces actionable data and insights that improve health facilities' operational efficiency and prioritize interoperability (FHIR and HL7), enabling the easy transfer of healthcare data between facilities.

The Helium Health Data Network is arguably the most impressive aggregate of granular health data on the continent. Because in addition to being built on data from our foundational EMR/HMIS solution, which continues to scale rapidly across the continent, it also integrates with other systems such as CHW apps, facilitating the inclusion of community health level data in referrals to other care levels.

Accurate information is the foundation of sound healthcare decisions at every level. Data collected at points of care are critical components of this foundation. In addition to supplying health workers with comprehensive patient profiles that aid in clinical assessment, when aggregated, healthcare data can facilitate effective resource allocation, support public health monitoring and disease surveillance, and unlock health financing options. Therefore, our target audience includes health workers, health administrators, healthcare policymakers, funders, researchers, and patients themselves.

We support health workers by providing comprehensive patient medical histories for improved diagnosis. In addition to richer individual patient data, through the HH Data Network, we can leverage the power of big data (aggregated patient data) and develop clinical decision support tools to enhance their work. We are working with health facilities using our EMR to understand the most in-demand areas for clinical decision support. At the moment, we are exploring the development of a Venous thromboembolism (VTE) assessment tool in collaboration with Sanofi Nigeria. This tool will help healthcare providers determine which patients are at high risk of VTE.

Ultimately, our solution will scale epidemiological data to inform decision-making at state, national and regional levels. Use cases include identifying the leading causes of child and maternal mortality, transmitting early warnings of epidemics, identifying high-risk communities for preventative interventions, and measuring the impact of these interventions. We are currently in discussions with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health to push healthcare data from our network to the national instance of DHIS2.

Lastly, researchers can also leverage patient longitudinal data in the HH Data Network to improve Africa’s underrepresentation in global drug development by identifying underserved pharmaceutical needs and recruiting clinical trial candidates. We are participating in a large-scale data exploration study by Professor Manjinder Sandhu, the Chair of Population Health & Data Sciences at Imperial College UK’s Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. This study hopes to investigate the burden and risk of communicable and chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa.

A solid health information system is necessary for the early detection of diseases, the seamless transfer of information about disease events, and the efficient coordination of public health response activities. 

Our solution is a critical element of this health information system and is aligned with the challenge in the following ways:

- Facilitating the in-facility analysis of disease occurrence data to alert health workers to trends

- Aggregating data and facilitating its analysis within geographical clusters, creating a system that alerts health facilities authorities to early warnings of disease outbreaks

- Enabling data-backed resource allocation for disease outbreak response

We selected the pilot stage of development because our core pilot activity is a data exploration study with Professor Manjinder Sandhu, the Chair of Population Health & Data Sciences at Imperial College UK’s Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. This preliminary study is part of a pioneering large-scale research program utilizing real-world health data from sub-Saharan Africa. Hosted by the MRC Center for Environment and Health at Imperial College, this research program hopes to investigate:

1. The burden and risk of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa

2. The impact of maternal and childhood health on chronic NCDs

3. The changing burden of infectious diseases

4. The interrelationship between NCDs and infectious disease (like COVID-19)

The original problem our company set out to solve was the limited availability and fragmentation of healthcare data. We soon realized that most healthcare data on the continent is trapped in paper, and to solve this problem, we would have to digitize healthcare data at the point of care. Therefore, what makes our solution unique is our strategy of solving the problem of digitizing healthcare data at the point of care, our execution of this strategy with the creation/deployment of our EMR solution (now with the widest reach in West Africa), and our dogged focus on interoperability and linking other sources of data. We have created the largest, fastest-growing digital infrastructure to seamlessly collect and utilize actionable data for improving healthcare.

We have also recognized that over the years, numerous solutions have emerged to solve the problem of digitizing healthcare. However, almost all of them are siloed from other systems and, in some cases, other deployment instances. Thus, data remains fragmented and underutilized.

Our solution is innovative because we are creating a data "superhighway" that plugs in different data sources, making their aggregation greater than the sum of their parts. Central to our purpose is facilitating the easy transfer of patient information through different levels of care, thus enabling health workers to catch early warning signs of communicable and non-communicable chronic disease from the patient level all the way to the regional/national level. This level of data can alter the course of patient outcomes when the onset of NCDs is caught early and can prevent outbreaks of communicable disease.

Our solution does not currently serve anyone as we are about to go into a pilot phase.

However, in the next year, we anticipate that our solution will impact millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East.

We will measure our success against:

• The number of external healthcare data solutions we integrate with and the number of patient referrals we are able to enhance. We are already in conversations with several community health worker apps such as MedtronicLABS and Medic Mobile about integrations
• The number of researchers and collaborators that are able to use our data
• The number of academic papers published by these researchers and collaborators
• The number of citations we receive in the creation of policies and white papers
• The number of health workers that use our Clinical Decision Support tools
• The number of patients our clinical decision support tools is used for

There are 103 full-time employees of Helium Health. Four of these employees belong to our data team.

Our team is skilled in using machine learning and advanced analytics to transform healthcare data.

• Our Chief Data Officer has over 10 years of experience leading data Analytics initiatives for healthcare across Africa and Europe, working with organizations like Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO, and CDC to deploy data analytics technology to power disease surveillance and outbreak response.

• Our Data Engineer has over 4 years of experience leading Data Engineering on termed projects with multinational corporations and three Nigerian startups. The combined exposures have provided the Data Engineer with the skills needed to build a state-of-the-art data platform for the collection and consolidation of data and set up reliable processes for continuous analysis of the collected data  

• Our Lead Data Scientist has 5 years of experience in building and scaling AI/ML systems that have helped solve challenging business problems across industries.  His vast experience will help Helium Health to build and scale data products that will proffer solutions around both prescriptive and predictive analytics.

On the business and strategy side, 

• I, the CEO and Co-Founder, am a 3x founder with several years of experience building and scaling startups. I have computer science and engineering degrees from Morgan State University and Johns Hopkins University
• Our Head of Partnerships has worked at startups across 3
  continents. She has managed partnerships with entities like Alibaba and Johnson & Johnson, and led the execution of landmark projects such as the delivery of medical products via drones. 

We are intentional about building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team. As such, our leadership team is made up of 40% women, and our core data team is made up of 30% women.

Our goal is 50% representation of women, and we are determined not to drop below 30%.