The Digital Solutions for Malaria Elimination Community of Practice is a community of technology organizations, implementers, and subject matter experts who use, develop, or support digital tools in country-led efforts to eliminate malaria.

Recent Newsletters

Slide Update on Opening Session and DSME Tool Pilot Results (Part 1 & Part 2) September 2020: DSME Community Meeting Update The 2020 DSME Community Meeting began with an Opening Session on September 10th. Two sessions covered the DSME Tool Pilot Results, Part 1: Case Notification and Investigation was held on September 15th and Part 2: Focus Investigation and IRS was held on September 17th. 70+ participants from 31+ organizations in 15+ countries joined the sessions. Link to September Newsletter Slide Latest DHIS2 Android developments and integrations August 2020: DHIS2 Android Developments The DSME Community call in August focused on DHIS2. 34 participants from 20 organizations joined the call. University of Oslo, PATH MACEPA, and OpenFn led showcases focused on recent updates to DHIS2 Android, integrations, and use cases for malaria elimination, including implementation of DHIS2 Tracker in Senegal. Link to August Newsletter Slide How can updates to Reveal improve the efficiency and effectiveness of malaria elimination programs? July 2020: Reveal Upgrades The DSME Community call in July focused on updates to Reveal. 33+ participants from 15+ organizations joined the call. Akros and Ona led showcases highlighting recent updates to Reveal focusing on monitoring true coverage and dynamic tasking features. Link to July Newsletter Slide How can data and resource repositories improve the efficiency and effectiveness of malaria programs? June 2020: Data Repositories The DSME Community call in June focused on data and resource repositories. 33+ participants from 16+ organizations joined the call. The Global Vector Hub and TerraFrame led showcases highlighting some of their latest developments creating and applying data management tools to support decision making for malaria elimination programs. Link to June Newsletter Slide What data visualizations are most used, shared, and discussed by malaria control programs? May 2020: Data Visualization The DSME Community call in May focused on data visualization. 31+ participants from 14+ organizations joined the call. Members provided updates on their work tailoring malaria interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic and shared related resources. PSI, CHAI, and Novel-T led showcases highlighting some of their latest developments creating or applying data visualization tools to improve decision making for malaria and polio programs. Link to May Newsletter Slide April 2020: COVID Response Tools How can tools and best practices developed for malaria elimination support COVID-19 response? The DSME Community call in April had a special focus on COVID-19 response. 41+ participants from 22+ organizations joined the call. 11 members provided updates on their work supporting COVID-19 response efforts, as well as discussed linkages to broader disease surveillance and malaria elimination tools. Dimagi, PATH, PraekeIt, and Zenysis led showcases on digital tools used for COVID-19 disease surveillance and contact tracing, malaria data visualization for decision making, disseminating guidance to health workers, and integrating and analyzing data for response activities. Link to April Newsletter Slide What do technology providers in the DSME community need to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their products? March 2020: AI and Machine Learning Tools The DSME Community call in March had a special focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. 28+ participants from 14+ organizations joined the call. Link to March Newsletter

Who We Are

The Digital Solutions for Malaria Elimination Community of Practice is a community of technology organizations, implementers, and subject matter experts who use, develop, or support digital tools in country-led efforts to eliminate malaria.

Problem Statement

“After an unprecedented period of success in global malaria control, progress has stalled. Data from 2015–2017 highlight that no significant progress in reducing global malaria cases was made in this period. There were an estimated 219 million cases and 435 000 related deaths in 2017.” – WHO World malaria report 2018

Our Objectives

The Digital Solutions for Malaria Elimination (DSME) Community of Practice (COP) supports governments in their efforts to eliminate malaria by building and supporting comprehensive and sustainable malaria surveillance systems to make complete, timely, and accurate data reporting easier and to improve decision-making processes. The establishment of this community was made possible by the DSME project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. View the 1 pager.

Advisory

The COP serves an advisory role on the DSME project to ensure that global best practices are incorporated into the DSME project outputs and activities, including:

  • Software requirements,
  • The development and integration of digital tools, and
  • Testing, implementation, and monitoring & evaluation plans.

Common Goods Development

Community members with open-source software development or implementation expertise may contribute their time to create and test global, common goods that can be adopted by other community members and mobile tool providers, including:

  • Reusable implementation materials such as checklists, training materials and job aids, and template documents that can be customized for any country implementation (see Implementation Guidance),
  • Code libraries that can be integrated into multiple mobile tools to provide users with common functionality, regardless of which mobile tool they are using (see Geospatial Widget), and
  • Foundational software platforms and databases that can be used to centrally store and manage access to common data required by multiple mobile tools used in a country (see Common Geo-Registry and Common Data Dictionary), and
  • Sharing common software design principles that can improve ease of use of digital tools for malaria-endemic environments.

Long-term Sustainability

Community members will work together to sustain collaboration and reduce redundant work, investments, and technology fragmentation in malaria and other health areas, by:

  • Committing to participating in community meetings and sharing updates on relevant work, plans, and the latest developments in technology and implementation experience to create greater awareness of best practices and areas of unmet need, and
  • Actively participating in regular discussions on the direction of the community to shape its purpose, responsibilities, and governance structure.

Documentation and Dissemination

Community members will work together to document, disseminate, and support uptake of information and knowledge generated by this community to country malaria elimination programs, by:

  • Documenting and sharing use cases describing the application of global common goods,
  • Hosting and contributing to global forums to link implementing partners and country programs to global common goods and processes,
  • Providing frameworks and tools to guide country programs’ and implementing partners’ budgeting and planning processes for implementation and sustainability of common goods and mobile tools, and
  • Linking WHO malaria elimination certification processes with common goods and mobile tools created and used by this community.

Community Showcases

View all showcases

Chatbots and social media for surveillance

 

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Applying Standards in DSME tools

 

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WHO Standard Data Definitions

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Zambia Reveal Implementation

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South Africa DHIS2 Implementation

Check our wiki

We keep all open-source code and documentation in public view

View Wiki

Join the conversation

Participate in monthly community calls, working group calls for common goods, and find previous meeting agendas and minutes

Core Community CallsGeospatial Widget & Common Geo-Registry Calls

Current Community of Practice Members

Vital Wave serves as the current steward of DSME community. Interested in joining? Read our member commitments and Get Involved!