Priority Use Cases for the CHT's COVID-19 Response

[helenelizabeth]

As the COVID response continues to move apace, we wanted to share an overview of how we are thinking about priority use cases for the CHT’s COVID-19 response.

Our Response

Medic Mobile, the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC), and other Community Health Toolkit contributors are thinking about how digital tools and community healthcare workers can best support the COVID-19 response across the scale of the community, the health facility, and the broader health system, as well as within individual households and with specific patients.

Medic is currently working on multiple projects related to COVID-19 response, including partnerships with Ministries of Health in Nepal and Kenya. We are exploring opportunities to layer on COVID-19 prevention, surveillance, and case management workflows to these platforms in line with the MOH strategic priorities. We are particularly focused on supporting surveillance and home-based care efforts, as well as empowering and protecting frontline health workers at the community level.

Across other CHT deployments in partnership with community health implementers, we are exploring standardization of COVID-19 care guides, protocols, and data standards. We are also coordinating with the broader digital health community - with the goal of strengthening existing systems, contributing content and ideas, and enhancing harmonization between existing tools, systems and standards.

How We Are Working Together

Medic Mobile will use the CHT and work with our implementing partners to enable new use cases, such as screening at ports of entry, and adapt existing use cases to enable CHWs to fight COVID-19. The key use cases mentioned above will be the foundation of our COVID-19 response, which will range from screening to event based surveillance and support to contact tracing to capacity building for CHWs and members of their community through client-initiated messaging, information sharing, and self-screening. This will enable CHWs to screen, report, and track people with COVID-19 symptoms; conduct contact tracing and monitoring; link community members with care via referrals and other recommendations; and to educate themselves and community members on best practices for staying safe and preventing the spread of COVID-19.

The Use Cases

We are exploring the following priority use cases for the CHT, which we have grouped in four overarching categories: Surveillance & Detection, Patient Care, Protecting CHWs, and Adapting PHC. To learn more, please see the full list below.

Surveillance and Detection

• Port of entry screening
• Event-based surveillance
• Community EBS
• Contact tracing

Patient Care for COVID-19

• Community-based symptom screening
• Rapid diagnostic testing
• Referrals to care
• Proactive messaging to support:
  • Home-Based Quarantine Support
  • CHW Self-Assessments
  • Patient Self-Assessments

Protecting Community Healthcare Workers

• PPE projections
• CHW remote training & education
• CHW mental health & wellbeing

Adaptations to PHC

• Adapting existing priority PHC workflows, including: ANC, PNC, iCCM, Malnutrition & Family Planning

In addition, we have mapped these use cases to different phases of the outbreak response and an associated timeline. This is in the visual linked here!

For an evolving table of use cases, CHW actions, and other relevant information, go here: COVID-19 Phases Mapped to CHW Roles & Technology Use Cases

We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions on our thinking below!

[isaacholeman]

This looks great Helen! I went ahead and edited your post to embed the latest image at the top of the post. If you put your mouse/cursor over the image you’ll see arrows in the bottom right to expand it to almost full screen.

[helenelizabeth]

Thanks so much, Isaac! You’ll have to show me how to do that

[bengregori]

Hi everyone,

I’m a policy researcher at New America, a Washington DC-based think tank. We are building an open source repository of code from civic tech innovators that governments can use in response to challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s called the Pandemic Response Repository, and it’s designed to improve discoverability of open source software that governments can use to quickly, efficiently and securely integrate digital solutions in response to constituent needs.

CHT would fit the bill; it’s software that other government agencies at the state level could use to deliver benefits to their constituents. Do you know if it’s currently being used by any public sector agencies? We’d love to consider adding it to our repo to help other governments utilize the software.

Thanks,
Ben

[isaacholeman]

Thanks for reaching out @bengregori! I’m a fan of New America and have followed your projects in the past, but hadn’t seen your Pandemic Response Repository. Governments around the world are among the largest users of the CHT, over 12,000 health workers use the CHT in programs run by local government agencies in Kenya and Nepal. Most CHT implementations are in Africa and Asia, but this is changing though–we’re hearing from more and more community health organizations in the US that have similar needs. An Accountable Care organization in Washington State is currently exploring a CHT implementation. They’re not exactly government agency, but formed by the Affordable Care Act and I think a good fit for what you’re looking for. We’d be delighted to have the CHT included in your repo.

[helenelizabeth]

Thanks so much @bengregori. Please let us know if you’d like any additional details or more information to share. Glad to have you as a member of our community!

[bengregori]

Thank you both so much! We’ve included you in our repo, and hope that this added visibility garners more visibility as governments around the world seek solutions to challenges posed by coronavirus. Take care

[Karin_Kallander]

This table is an excellent resource.

[helenelizabeth]

Thanks so much, @Karin_Kallander! If you have any feedback or suggested updates, please let us know.