The Community Health Toolkit (CHT)

Open-source software and resources to help partners design and deploy digital health apps for community health systems and frontline health workers.

Past and Current Partners

Skoll Award of Social Entrepreneurship, Global Citizen Accelerate Award, GAVI INFUSE, Pacesetter Laureate of the Tech of Global Good, Fast Forward Accelerator

Active Countries
Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Thematic area(s)
Health
Technology
Open Source
Organisation Name
Medic Mobile Inc. (Medic)
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The Problem

The target problem that CHT solves is providing digital health solutions to half of the world's population that cannot obtain essential health services because doctors, nurses, and facilities are either inaccessible, unaffordable, or under-resourced. Despite the rapid development of technology and communication infrastructure in these same parts of the world, the technology is underutilized or ineffectively applied to support healthcare where it is most needed. Key user groups of digital health apps, built with the CHT, include Community Health Workers (CHWs), frontline supervisors, facility-based nurses, health system managers, and patients and caregivers.

The Solution

Medic serves as a technical steward and core contributor of the Community Health Toolkit (CHT), a collection of open-source software frameworks and applications, open-access resources, and a vibrant community forum to help partners design and deploy digital health apps for community health systems and frontline health workers.

How it works?

  • Step 1: Medic builds, sustains, and advances the CHT as a digital public good
  • Step 2: Medic partners with Ministries of Health, NGOs, researchers, and technical organizations to design, deploy, and scale digital health apps that meet specific community health, well-being, and development needs
  • Step 3: After dedicated training, health workers begin using the digital health apps in their day-to-day activities as they provide doorstep care in their communities
  • Step 4: High-quality data is created through the use of apps, offering an opportunity and responsibility to monitor health system performance, analyze data across use cases, understand impact, and continually improve the tools
  • Step 5: With data aggregation and data visualization, Medic works with NGOs and government health system partners to incorporate data into national planning processes and allocate resources to address urgent health needs at the community, regional, and national levels
Digital X Solution The Community Health Toolkit (CHT)

Bridging the digital divide

Medic designs solutions for complex use cases and health systems with the voice of the end-user included throughout the process (often user groups with historically low literacy rates and minimal exposure to advanced technology). Digital health apps must also support health systems in a wide range of low-infrastructure environments. Apps built with the CHT Core Framework are designed to be offline-first and work with limited internet connections, enabling health workers to carry out important duties even when opportunities to sync their devices may be weeks apart.

Impact and highlights

  • Digital health apps built with the CHT are deployed in 15 countries in Africa and Asia and support more than 37,300 health workers.
  • Collectively, this cadre of frontline health workers has used CHT-based digital health apps to perform 75.6M+ caring activities in the communities since 2014.
  • The largest health worker networks currently supported by the CHT are in Kenya, Nepal, and Uganda, each with approximately 10,000 active app users.

Plans for expansion

Where there is interest, political will, and available resources, Medic and the CHT are prepared to support any Ministry of Health, technical organization, and/or implementing agency working to advance community-based health systems.

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