The “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators” were unveiled on December 4th, during a special Sunday evening reception prior to the launch of the mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. Pesinet is one of them and, as such, was invited to the 3-day conference gathering key players of the mHealth sector.

The mHealth Alliance, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, organized in November 2011 the “Top 11 in 2011 Innovators Challenge”, a first-of-its-kind challenge which recognizes pioneering mobile health professionals who have used mobile technology in innovative ways to improve health systems and outcomes in even the most remote areas of the world. The winners were announced at a reception held in advance of the mHealth Summit being held in the Washington, DC area.

The Top 11 in 2011 Innovators were selected through a process that included public nominations and voting on the mHealth Alliance’s HealthUnbound.org, as well as selection by a jury of experts. Nominations came from more than 30 countries around the world.

Innovators were  able to share their respective experience and showacse their work at the mHelath Alliance booth as well as actively participate in the conference during the 3 following days.

“As the mHealth community gathers for the annual mHealth Summit, we are excited to recognize these innovators, many of whom are working in low resource environments on behalf of poor and vulnerable populations,” said Karl Brown, Associate Director of applied technology at the Rockefeller Foundation. “We hope that the contributions of the Top 11 in 2011 will inspire many others to continue advancing the capabilities of mobile technologies to deliver positive health outcomes.”

The mHealth Alliance champions use of mobile technologies to improve health throughout the world. Working with diverse partners to integrate mHealth into multiple sectors, the Alliance serves as a convener for the mHealth community to overcome common challenges by sharing tools, knowledge, experience, and lessons learned.This year’s mHealth Summit was the 3rd edition of the annual gathering and brought together around 3, 000 people including leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers, and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystem.

>> To discover the Top 11 Innovators, click here.

Pesinet and Action Against Hunger -  Spain  have been working together since last September on the development of a technological solution for health data reporting and intrants stocks management in nutrition. This technological solution will be deployed in the region of Gao, Mali, in partnership with the Regional Health Department and all players of the healthcare system in the region.

This partnership is part of a broader project for sustainable reinforcement of local and regional capacities in acute malnutrition treatment in Gao, led by Action Against Hunger – Spain in Mali with funding from ECHO*. The region of Gao appears as one of the most affected by malnutrition in all national nutritional surveys. The numerous surveys run by Action Against Hunger – Spain confirm that malnutrition often reaches 15 to 20% of the population with significant picks in food crisis periods. Action Against Hunger has been supporting more than 20 healthcare centers since 2007 in the Districts of Ansongo and Gao.

Pesinet was chosen by Action Against Hunger as a partner of this program, to work on the design of an innovative technological tool aimed at enhancing reliability of data transfer, aggregation, and analysis on nutritional rehabilitation activities in healthcare centers, at improving the reporting system and the management of nutritional intrants stocks at regional level.  The solution will be deployed on 4 Community Healthcare Centers in the District of Gao and Ansongo, as well as the two Reference Centers of the Districts and the Regional Health Department..

The first key step of the project took place in October with a participatory design workshop animated by Pesinet’s CEO. The workshop gathered all actors involved in healthcare structures and in nutritional inputs supply chain management in the region.

The 2-day workshop was a great success. It enabled to establish a diagnosis of the main problems encountered in the field by healthcare professionals at each level, to idenitfy among those problems whether they could be addressed in an appropriate way by a reporting tool leveraging new technologies and to define key features of the technological solution.

Based on needs expressed by local actors in the workshop, Pesinet has designed an innovative solution that will help professionals of the healthcare system at different level to animate the health data reporting process in an interactive way and will provide tools to facilitate the reporting activities and stock management.

The solution is currently being developed. Implementation of the system is planned for  February 2012.

* European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

After 18 months of volunteer work with Pesinet, Lucie joined the team full-time in May 2011. She is now actively involved in the development of Pesinet.

• Lucie, can you tell us about your background? What did you do before joining Pesinet?

I spent my last months as an ESSEC student doing an internship in South East Asia; then I joined Indicta, a French consulting firm. In parallel, I started to get interested in social entrepreneurship. I heard about Pesinet through my cousin who is one of the 3 co-founders of Pesinet, and I decided to get involved. It was a good time for me, and a good time for Pesinet which needed motivated people to help Anne (CEO and co-founder of Pesinet) expand the NGO. For 18 months, I dedicated part of my spare time for Pesinet, before joining on a full-time basis.

• What were your first tasks ?

I started off with Pesinet’s participation in the Convergences 2015 forum in Paris. For the next 3 months, I contributed to the strategic thinking on Pesinet’s economic model, I took charge of relationships with our financial partners, I created a « corporate » brochure for Pesinet and I followed up on technological developments for our health application. Then I prepared my trip to Mali.

• You spent 3 months with the field teams in Bamako…

Yes, it was essential that I spend some time in Mali in order to acquaint myself with the field, to understand the local health context in greater depth, and to meet the local teams. I arrived just when we were preparing the launch of Pesinet on 2 new sites, so it was a great time to be there!

• What did you work on in Bamako?

My main mission was to lead the marketing studies for our “premium offer” project. This is one of the possibilities that we are considering to strengthen our economic model: developing a premium health service that would be more expensive but also more comprehensive than our current health service and would target families that have the desire and the financial means to spend more on their children’s health. On that service, we would make a margin that would improve the global self-financing rate and sustain the service dedicated to lower-income families.

I organized a first series of focus groups that enabled to gauge the interest of families for a premium offer and to identify the elements not included in our current service that would have high added value for families. Based on the results, we built an offer that we are currently testing through a second series of focus groups.

• What are your impressions of the field? Is it very different from what you imagined from France?

I was astonished to see how much activities have developed and improved since my first field visit in February 2010.

We now have strong and motivated teams, and well-structured processes that enable sound running of operations. Things are done well, and in a lively atmosphere! Incidentally, this is something that clearly emerged during the focus groups: subscribing families are very pleased with the Pesinet service, in particular with the work of our agents – their professionalism, their involvement, their joviality.

Moreover, we strengthened our relationships with the local health authorities. Pesinet is now acknowledged as an important actor in the field of community healthcare; and regularly invited to contribute to strategic workshops on these topics.

I am thrilled by those three months in Mali! It was a very enriching experience. I got to develop strong relationships with my colleagues, which will enable me to be fully part of the team, even from France.

• You are just back from Mali. Will you continue to work for Pesinet from Paris?

Yes, there is also a lot to do from Paris to support the development of the NGO and its activities. 2012 promises to be as busy as 2011. On the menu : development and launch of a pregnancy-care service ; investigation of partnership possibilities with mutual insurance structures and microfinance institutions, and preliminary feasibility studies for a pilot site in rural zone. All these projects will give me plenty of opportunities for future field missions in Mali!

Pesinet has been referenced in a recent white paper by Advanced Development for Africa (ADA) on key elements for the sucessful scale-up of mHealth programs. Pesinet was an important contributor to the report as an expert and as a case study.

Commissioned by ADA to assess current implementations of successful mHealth programs in developing country contexts, this white paper identifies elements necessary for successfully scaling up and highlights best practices and specific programmatic, operational, policy and global strategy recommendations that can promote the scale up of mHealth in developing countries.

Profiled in this report are several select mHealth programs that have been piloted and are currently in the scale up phase, and have proven enough success that they should be considered as models for other initiatives to follow. Drawing from these case studies as well as interviews with mHealth experts, including Patricia Mechael of the mHealth Alliance, David Aylward of Ashoka, Brooke Partridge of Vital Wave Consulting, Anne-Roos Weil of Pesinet and Getachew Sahlu of the WHO, the primary goal of this white paper is to provide evidence and recommendations that will enable mHealth initiatives to better plan their own scale up beyond successful pilot phases.

>> You can download the report by clicking here.

Since the official launch ceremony on October 25th, during which the partnership between Pesinet and the community health centers was made official, Pesinet teams have been actively working on the operational launch of the service in the neighbourhoods of Dravela and Ouolofobougou. The start of activities is now imminent, and the first visits of agents should take place before the end of the year.

The negotiation process, which lasted for the first 8 months of 2011, enabled Pesinet and the Community Health Associations of Dravela and Ouolofobougou to reach a partnership agreement, which was formally signed during an official launching ceremony that took place on October 25th at Dravela Community Health Center.

The ceremony gathered both presidents of the Community Health Associations, the chiefs of districts, a representative of the mayor, local associations, inhabitants of the neighborhood, but also representatives of local & national institutions involved in the development of Pesinet activities.

Discover the video report broadcast by the national TV channel ORTM and the photos of the ceremony.

Since the ceremony, the teams have been focusing on getting everything prepared for the operational launch of the service.

On the Human Resources side, Pesinet hired a new supervisor, Boubacar Dicko, who took up his position on November 21st. He is in charge of supervising activities in the 3rd District: the pilot site and the two new sites. He will be trained and closely supported by the coordinator in the next few months.

Simultaneously, 4 agents have been recruited, based on a selection made by the partnering health centres. Adiaratou TRAORE and Maïmouna KONE will be in charge of Ouolofobougou subscribers, while Mama TOURE and Astan SAKILIBA will follow up on the children of Dravela. The 4 agents received initial training on November 29 and 30. This 2-day session, which was co-led by the supervisor and the coordinator, dealt with Pesinet’s operational procedures and tools.

The new agents will receive further training on Essential Family Practices and Communication for Behaviour Change in January 2012. Though the service has not started yet, agents are already at work, promoting the service and recruiting new subscribers in their respective areas of intervention.

The last few weeks were also dedicated to the promotion of the service among the populations served. Communication actions included radio & press coverage of the launching ceremony (>> Discover Pesinet press review in the local newspapers), a report on Pesinet in the TV program CyberNTIC broadcast on December 13th, and the direct work of agents in the families. New actions will be undertaken in the next few months to further promote the service.

The last step yet to complete is to get the teams of the partnering health centres (doctors, pharmacist, reception staff) ready to operate the service. They will all receive training on Pesinet operational procedures and on best practices for welcoming patients in the health centre. The centers will be then equipped with a computer, internet connexion and small medical equipment.

Let’s wish the service will be a great success in the 2 new neighborhoods. It’s off to a good start: already 320 children are pre-enrolled in the service and waiting for their first home visit!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

This article is available in French only.

Pesinet is enrolled in the « Making More Health » competition and we need your help !

The “Making More Health” competition is co-organized by Ashoka, the global network of social entrepreneurs, and Boehringer Ingelheim, a global pharmaceutical company. The competition rewards innovative models that sustainably increase individual, family, and community health and well-
being.

The winning prize is 10 000$ for each of the 3 laureate projects. But first and foremost, it’s a prestigious recognition from professionals of the health and social entrepreneurship sectors.

A panel of expert judges is currently selecting a pool of 10-15 finalists. These projects will then be submitted to the vote of the internet users registered in the online Changemakers community for them to select the 3 winners.

The capacity of a projet to mobilize the internet community as well as its supporters around its application is an important criterium that will be taken into account by the jury of experts while selecting finalists.

In order to help Pesinet be more visible among the 470 projects submitted, we invite you to comment on our application. The process is very simple:

• Create your profile on the Changemakers community : http://www.changemakers.com/user/register (it takes less than a minute)
• Go on our project page: http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/x
• Discover our application, and react: ask questions, give your opinion, leave a word of support…

The selection process by the jury of experts has already started, and the finalists will be announced on November 9th. In order to make it to the final round, we need a lot of comments as soon as possible.

If we are among the 10 finalists, we will also need you to vote !

Thanks for your help !

Following the promising results of the pilot program in the district of Bamako Coura, and at the request of community health centers in neighbouring districts, Pesinet has been working for several months with its partners to expand its scope of action in two new districts of  Bamako and has set the grounds for future deployments of the program.

The extension of the Pesinet program to two new areas in District III,  those of Dravela and Ouolofobougou, is particularly significant as it paves the way for a replicable intervention model at a larger scale in Community Health Centers (CHCs) of Mali, starting with urban health centers.

The objective of the concertation process engaged with all stakeholders this year was indeed to set a standard agreement, veted at national and local level by public authorities, to facilitate future deployments of the program on a common basis. The success of the consultation undertaken with our partners is an important milestone to offer our service to a larger number of families and ensure the sustainability of activities in partnering healthcare centers.

Hence this extension is the result of a successful collaboration between Pesinet, community health associations of the two new districts, health organizations in the civil society and health institutions in Mali.

The first exchanges with the two CHCs were initiated in early 2011 in order to confirm their interest and the main principles of our partnership. In the months that followed, the National Federation of Community Health Centres (FENASCOM), the Regional Department of Health, the mayor of the District III, and the Department of Social Development have been involved in discussions to achieve the formalization of a model agreement to facilitate the future launch of Pesinet in other CHCs of the country.

The consultation process culminated on July 20th and August 3rd with an agreement on the partnership convention and the detailed roadmap with both CHCs. On September 2, an agreement was also signed with the FENASCOM to validate this model agreement and cooperate on the development of Pesinet in new areas, and the definition of new services to offer.

Meanwhile, teams have been busy preparing the launch of the service in the new districts. Two feasibility studies were first initiated. The survey confirmed strong demand for thePesinet service from populations (92% of families surveyed wish to subscribe to the service and 66% are readily willing to pay 500FCFA per month) and a high potential for improvement of CHCs’s attendance rates  (73.44% of people saying that they would subscribe to the service would become new users of the health center district).

With the agreement of the parties on the roadmap and the partnership document, the project has now entered into its preparatory phase, with the recruitment of local teams, the provision of equipment and work tools, as well as the  training of teams in the two CHCs.

In order to ensure the rapid development of both programs and to publicize the Pesinet service amonf populations, we have planned initiatives for community mobilization and an important communication plan  including “town criers”, local and national radio, newsletters, reports broadcast on national TV and national TV shows specialised in new technologies.”

The official launch of the two new programs, Dravela and Ouolofobougou, took place on Oct. 25, 2011, at a ceremony  during which the two agreements were signed.