Announcing the Data Analytics and Use awardees!

6 min readNov 17, 2020

We are excited to announce the latest round of awardees via the COVIDaction Data Challenge, under the theme of Data Analytics and Use. OpenFN, BAO Systems and Fraym are the top three we will be working with so that they can push forward in their work.

How did we get here? 94 responses to the call were reviewed twice by a team of 13 experts — to whom we are ever grateful. The top 25 were then shortlisted and we brought the final 3 forward to support with finance and technical assistance.

We split this theme into two categories — data integration tools (i.e. OpenFn) and analytics and use platforms (BAO Systems and Fraym). The use of integration and analysis tools are being developed and used to inform the response to COVID-19; they help organisations, governments and experts leverage their existing data resources to better understand risks and vulnerabilities and inform the response.

Without further ado, here’s an introduction to our awardees under Data Analytics and Use.

OpenFn — Open Function Group (OFG) helps scale health & humanitarian interventions via automation, data integration, and interoperability. OFG has developed OpenFn, an enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) and maintains a large suite of open source tools (OpenFn/core, OpenFn/microservice, OpenFn/devtools, etc.) to provide a way for organisations to run integrations developed on OpenFn’s hosted platform on their own local infrastructure. At COVIDaction we love things that help make using open source software easier. Interoperability (i.e. getting information where it needs to be in real-time, across multiple applications and user groups) and automation (performing time-consuming human tasks by machine) are important for organisations hoping to scale their impact; in the case of government pandemic response efforts, they’re absolutely vital. We will be supporting this organisation to continue its collaboration with DIAL, enhance the rapid-deployment process for their open-source tools, and automate the flow of data that’s driving an effective response to COVID-19.

BAO Systems — We’re investing in open sourcing the BAO Systems Data Library to support the use of globally available public data sets (think DHS Program, World Bank, and WHO data) together with compliant DHIS2 data sets by those using the DHIS2 COVID-19 Surveillance Package. In the land of initialisms and acronyms, what is a DHIS2? It’s an open-source software platform where people can report, analyse and share data. This platform is being used to track the spread of the pandemic around the world and it has already been spotted as a key digital solution by Johns Hopkins University, the CDC and Digital Square. You can find out a lot more about this here. What’s best about this investment, we’re empowering existing users of DHIS2 with new datasets that will be readily usable by end-users.

Fraym — Fraym uses machine learning to make data more accessible in geographies where information is often inconsistent and difficult to use when making important decisions in LMICs. We are investing in Fraym to make its geospatial data on COVID-19 risks more accessible at the community level. Fraym’s methodology is inspired by the Surgo Foundation’s COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), the US CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and WHO guidelines. This is an exciting addition to our investment portfolio because this will include countries that match those that our first investment awardee is working on. Check out our past post about the Surgo Foundation and its leader Dr Sema Sgaier.

We’re looking forward to working with these outstanding awardees and sharing progress and findings with you as we go along. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into the way these organisations work and what they hope to achieve, so stay tuned for those profiles.

Finally, want more COVIDaction in your life? You’re in luck!

We’re making our final awards over the next week and will be hosting a Data Challenge showcase in January — showing off all our awardees! If you’re interested in taking part, sign up right here.

You can also subscribe to our COVIDaction newsletter and follow us on Twitter for more news on data, tech, news and links.

Announcing the Data Analytics and Use awardees!

Written by dr noora fathei