Technology Consultant at Living Goods

Purpose

Living Goods is recruiting a consultant to provide technical assistance in assessing the mHealth landscape in Africa and help us understand the different technology options to scale.

Definition

Technology refers to all of the digital platforms and systems that collect and/ or analyse data related to the recruitment, training/ onboarding, supervision, performance management of Community Health Workers (CHWs) as well as any digital technology that facilitates CHWs to refer to health facilities, management of medical supply chains used to supply CHWs; community engagement done by CHWs and general data collection.

Background

Living Goods is entering a phase of rapid scaling with ambitions to expand our model to reach all people that need affordable, effective, impactful community health. Technology has become more and more embedded within our day to day operations, and we see it playing a fundamental role in our, and our partners ability to meet our long-term objective of creating systemic change in community health at a national and international level. As such, we are keen to understand new technologies, mobile and otherwise, to help us increase our impact and replicability and to further the field of community health as a whole. This might include other tech/software needs (POS, supply chain management), mobile money, mobile-based training, better messaging, integrating with clinics, etc. We are looking to analyse other digital solutions available on the market and their capability, current government systems and their needs, and what other tech tools we may want to implement.

Objectives

• Better understanding of the current capacity, usage and potential of mHealth, CHW data collection and performance and supervision technologies currently being used in developing countries to optimise community health delivery
• Clear understanding of the technical and organisational capacity of the top four most relevant and applicable solutions that support impactful community healthcare delivery
• Technology strategy to ensure Living Goods can achieve its 2030 vision of scaling through partners and implementers

Activities

Consultant to

• Review documents and generate a synoptic overview of mHealth services, coverage, and operators, in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Identify, interview and map key stakeholders within the mHealth ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa. Key informants will include donors, MOH, service providers, private sector/corporate CSR programs, other relevant government players (Ministry of Social Communication, Finance or Telecoms, independent regulatory agencies).
• Engage with all relevant technology providers and stakeholders to gather detailed data to create a technology landscape analysis for community health including:

• Technology owner and users
• Capability of each technology
• Ease of adoption and replicability etc.

• Catalogue and provide a technical assessment of the top four mHealth activities in Sub-Saharan Africa funded by donors or by the private sector, highlighting any weaknesses or challenges to replication or scaling.
• Engage with LG leadership, potential partners and different government bodies to clarify the longer-term technology requirements
• Host internal workshops to gain better understanding of how mHealth solutions are used in the field and the needs of users
• Inform technology partnership strategy by helping to answer the following questions
• What is the role of technology to reach our 2030 vision?
• What are the technology options to scale into other countries, and work with other governments and partners? If not, what do we need?
• How can we make our technology easy for partners to adopt to drive impact and help us scale?
• What would it take to upgrade our existing tech to plug and play for others?
• What it would take to develop other software to meet LG needs?
• What is the value of being able to work on multiple platforms/ software?
• What are the technology partnership opportunities which would allow us to reach some of our breakthroughs: Working with government Government paying Government doing National scale
• What would we need to do if we want to integrate with government systems or partner systems?
• How can technology support government middle management to better supervise their field staff and how can we fill that?
• How do we link with health facilities and bridge the referral gap

Deliverables

• Initial work plan with proposed activities and timelines

• Landscape analysis report
• Core: List of technology solutions currently being used in Africa to support community health systems and their capacity and scale
• Including what systems current ministries of health in Africa are using and how in reality they are being used as well as their ‘official’ capability
• Secondary: The largest technology solutions that have successfully scaled being used outside of Africa to support community health systems
• Tertiary: The largest mHealth and broader health solutions that could be translated to community health work

Landscape analysis methodology to include interviews of system developers, users, governments etc. to reflect the full capacity/ potential of solutions versus the reality of how it is being used

Expectation is that consultant will collate existing landscape analyses such as KEMRI mHealth study, GSMA studies and internal assessments done by peers.

• Living Goods technology strategy

• Internal assessment:
• Will our current technology platform enable LG to meet its 2030 vision?
• If not, what is required?
• What are the technology platform(s) options for Living Goods to help others improve performance management and supervision through technology?
• Should LG create a technology solution that is adopted by all or should we aim to become technology agnostic so that we are seen to partner with governments to identify the right solution for them, rather than as a vendor pushing a specific technology?
• Why have other mHealth solutions scaled? What are the lessons learnt for LG to develop a rapidly scalable solution?
• What technology is required for governments to meet their broader community health goals i.e. tools for middle management to better supervise their field staff etc.

• Debrief meeting with key actors to share the consultancy findings