CHALLENGES

India’s health system faces the challenge of monitoring and assessing the spread of infectious diseases in a large population of over 1.2 billion people. Malaria, in particular, poses a tremendous challenge for the entire public health system, especially in the country’s Northeast region where incidence and mortality are disproportionately high compared to other parts of the country. In 2013, the number of malaria cases was reported to be 0.88 million and the number of deaths 440,000 (National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, 2013). However, experts have warned that official malaria figures underestimate the burden significantly; incidence is said to be between 9 and 50 times higher and mortality around 13 times greater than officially reported (Hay, Gething & Snow, 2010; Dhingra et al., 2010). Without correct and current data, disease patterns are often misunderstood, health programmes do not accomplish their goals and resources are incorrectly allocated (Unite for Sight, 2016).

INTERVENTION

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is a government agency of the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that conducts cutting-edge research and development (R&D) in information technology and electronics. C-DAC’s projects leverage the organization’s technical expertise to tackle pressing social challenges in India. One of these projects is C-DAC’s digital platform for malaria surveillance, Mobile-based Surveillance Quest using IT (MoSQuIT). MoSQuIT automates and streamlines the otherwise manual malaria surveillance process undertaken by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme’s (NVBDCP) Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers in rural India. It was developed to address the challenges that the Indian health system faces in monitoring and managing malaria, especially in remote rural areas. MoSQuIT has four main objectives: 1) provide a real-time snapshot of malaria incidence in a community; 2) detect changes in malaria incidence distribution to initiate an appropriate health system response; 3) ensure transparency and accountability across the value-chain; and 4) measure the effectiveness of anti-malaria interventions and assess health system needs, such as stocks of medical supplies, in real-time. MoSQuIT uses the guidelines and policies that underpin the national surveillance programme delivered by ASHAs.

A pilot study was conducted across 50 villages for 18 months to demonstrate the effectiveness of the platform. C-DAC is now exploring deployment of MoSQuIT through the public health system and adapting the technology to serve other health challenges in India—such as the surveillance of tuberculosis.

CASE INSIGHTS

The MoSQuIT case demonstrates how disease surveillance efforts can be strengthened through a streamlined technology platform that gathers data from different care providers along the patient care continuum. Integrated data collection coupled with real-time analytics can help detect disease outbreaks and trigger a quicker health systems response. In addition, it enhances transparency, communication and trust between different care providers.