CHIIN

The Critical Healthcare Information Integration Network


A bridge between disconnected providers and dependable medical reference information.

The Problem

Community health workers in rural areas face an information deficit.

Community health workers (CHWs) play a crucial role in sustaining health systems in Africa, as the first point of entry to the health system for millions of Africans in rural and underdeveloped areas. CHWs are trained members of the community that hold responsibilities such as:

  • Performing health screenings
  • Immunizations
  • Primary infectious disease management
  • Patient education
  • Pre- and post-partum care

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of ensuring that these frontline workers are adequately trained and equipped with accurate medical reference information to guide their interactions with patients in the community. But while access to medical references among health workers has been shown to improve outcomes, on-demand access to medical references for CHWs is limited due to poor internet usage penetration on the continent.

SIM and internet penetration in Africa by 2025. Source: Global System for Mobile Communications Association (2019)

Our Solution

The Critical Healthcare Information Integration Network (CHIIN) is a free-for-use automated SMS messaging system that synthesizes validated medical information on context-relevant conditions and best practices into digestible text messages to community health workers practicing in rural settings.

CHIIN is a bridge between disconnected providers and dependable information.

Our team synthesizes materials from well-respected online medical reference sources (e.g. Mayo Clinic disease guides, CDC and WHO) into digestible text messages to be sent to offline community health workers. Users register and interact with a SMS chatbot powered by Twilio, a cloud communications platform that enables developers to programmatically make and receive text messages.

We parse information into appropriate categories and store it via Cloud Firestore, a cloud-hosted NoSQL database, which the chatbot interacts with when a user makes an information request. Users have the ability to search directly for information on specific chronic and infectious disease conditions, in addition to using an AI-powered symptom checker tool to retrieve a differential diagnosis for a patient with an unknown illness.

Our Pilot

Work with our partners closely informs platform strategy and design decisions.

Rural Health Mission Nigeria (RHEMN) is an NGO based in Gombe State, Nigeria focused on supporting rural healthcare workers with training and material resources to improve care delivery. CHIIN partnered with RHEMN to run a pilot involving 200 community healthworkers who have been trained and onboard onto our platform! All participants took a baseline survey via the CHIIN platform designed to assess the current practice of community health workers and how they access medical reference information before the introduction of CHIIN. We are excited about this first milestone and will closely follow feedback from our first users to improve the platform.


200

Community Health Workers served

15

Years of experience on average

30,763

Messages sent

Our Team

Founders

A well-balanced, committed core team

Sope Eweje

Managing Director

Sayo Eweje

Managing Director

Ebube Chuba

Technical Director

Busola Olukoya

Director of Operations

Esias Bedingar

Data Analyst

Ebube Ogbuagu

Medical Officer

Volunteers

A community of medical student volunteers from around the country

Nneoma Okonkwo

Maternal Health Specialist

Maryclare Chinedo

Social Media Manager

Catherine Yang

Maternal Health Specialist

Derrick Lewis

Clinical Data Specialist

Chigozie Amonu

Social Media Manager

Faven Russom

Clinical Data Specialist

Nadia Anderson

Maternal Health Specialist

Tema Fodje

Maternal Health Specialist

Tope Elutilo-Ayoola

Clinical Data Specialist

Constance Nyaunu

Clinical Data Specialist

Sofiat Atoba

Clinical Data Specialist

Sola Aderonmu

Maternal Health Specialist

Advisors

Our advisors bring years of combined expertise in working to bring mobile health technology interventions to primary healthcare settings around the world.

Muge Haseki, PhD

PSOM Center for Global Health mHealth Research

Nestor Inimgba, MD

Founder, Infodemics Anesthetist, Kettering General Hospital, England

Muhammad Saddiq, RN

Founder, Rural Health Mission Nigeria Senior Nursing Officer, Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe

Rebekah Emmanuel, MBA

Head of Social Entrepreneurship, Harvard i-Labs CHWs and Rural Health

Our Supporters

CHIIN has raised tens of thousands of dollars to further its mission, from backers including the Venture Lab of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, the MIT IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge, and the Harvard Innovation Lab. A combination of funding and mentorship from these supporters has been crucial to our progress.

Contact

Contact us at contact@chiin.org and follow us @chiinhealth on all platforms!