Healthsites Sengalese pilot - July 2019
Healthsites returned to Saint Louis in July 2019 and together with surveyors from OpenStreetMap Senegal, Geomatica and CartONG, collected 104 facilities in the district of Saint Louis. This data was saved to OpenStreetMap and shared with the Senegalese Ministry of Health.
The Regional Head of the Ministry of Health for the district of Saint Louis appreciated the geolocation of health facility data and the up-to-date information on the status of services present. Together we identified a number of user stories made possible by the data such as routing maps to determine the travel times to health services and their accessibility.
The Healthsites mobile application allows users to collect data and save directly to OpenStreetMap
Key figures
10 enumerators collected 104 facilities in 3 days
41 private / 58 public / 3 community / 1 NGO / 1 combination
24 open all the time
24 not wheelchair accessible
4 with solar electricity
https://healthsites.io/map?place=Saint%20Louis%20Senegal
Healthsites strategy
Healthsites is building a baseline of Health facility data with OpenStreetMap. We take a user centered design approach to drive the development of the data. This is the key part of the strategy as it allows us to focus on the needs of the citizens and stakeholders in the Health cluster. Please get in touch if you have user stories to share or would like to find out more.
Building an Open Community
#datacollaborative
Following the field mission in Saint Louis and the identification of priority user stories, supported by the data, the team returned to Dakar. The output of this pilot mission and the data sharing approach was presented at a workshop hosted by OCHA on the 23rd July. Organisations present included OCHA, PATH, AMREF , IntraHealth, MSF , SwissTPH and IT4life.
The participants identified the need and opportunity to include trusted users from the Ministry of Health and organisations in the health cluster that could moderate the data.
The collaboration model used during this pilot implementation — with Healthsites.io as cornerstone, the OpenStreetMap Senegal community as local focal point, and two professional operators (one international, CartONG, and one local, Geomatica) — to coordinate and implement field activities, have proved very efficient and we are looking forward to running similar set-ups in other countries.
Following the workshop we met with representatives from the Ministries Direction of Planning, Research and eHealth GIS Unit of the Senegalese Ministry of Health, in order to present the results of the pilot, and discuss potential future collaborations (this session followed a first working session organized in April to introduce the project, followed by other exchanges and document sharing).
Since the beginning, the approach of the collaborative have been to support the eHealth strategy of the Ministry of Health.
Following these exchanges, there seems to be a common understanding that while the development of crowdsourcing and citizen participation in public policies is both inevitable and an opportunity, it is in the interest of all parties that this change will be controlled and co-lead by the Ministry.
Key points:
- Prioritized user stories drive the development of the data
- Support the eHealth strategy of the Ministry of Health
- Stakeholders in the health cluster share data to address priority user stories
- Engage citizens and stakeholders in the health cluster to help maintain baseline health facility data
Open data standards for health facility data in OpenStreetMap
We follow a community engagement process with OpenStreetMap to establish a standardised way of mapping health facilities. We lay out the aims and approach of the project in a clear and transparent way.
Key point: OpenStreetMap is the data store for the Healthsites data schema
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Global_Healthsites_Mapping_Project
An Open platform
Our intention is to foster widespread usage of the data and the code that we provide.
Key point: The platform code is available on Github under the Free BSD License and the data is shared under the The Open Database License (ODbL)
Iterate
The pilot in Senegal was made possible through the Digital Square Global goods program.
Digital Square is a partnership of the world’s leading digital health experts from 40+ organizations and countries working together to strengthen digital health systems in emerging economies. The project supports co-investment into scalable technology solutions and create the environments in which they can be sustained. Digital Square is led by and housed at PATH, the leader in global health innovation.
Specifically, global goods are:
- Easy to implement and scale
- Adaptable to different countries and contexts
- Often, though not exclusively, open-source
- Funded by multiple donors and supported by a variety of implementers
Interoperable across commonly used system
