Teeko, an award-winning mobile health application developed by the Aga Khan Development Network’s Digital Health Resource Centre, is set to be scaled up yet again in a move that will see the Android-based application be deployed in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
This new phase of the project, Teeko+, is being supported by CAD $1 million in funding from
Grand Challenges Canada – an impact investment initiative that supports bold ideas with big impact – and the Aga Khan Foundation
Saleem Sayani presents key details of Teeko+ to stakeholders at the Islamabad meeting.
Canada, a sister agency of Aga Khan University committed to poverty alleviation.
In 2014-2016, a successful pilot of Teeko in Tando Mohammad Khan, in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, delivered a tripling in coverage rates for key vaccines, enhanced the performance and accountability of healthcare officials, and boosted access to essential mother and child health services. This led to the
government adopting the source code of Teeko into a new application, Tibbi, which will be available in every public health facility in the province.
The 13-month Teeko+ project will build on Teeko’s past successes and will enable real-time data to be collected on the health system’s ability to meet the needs of the local population. The application will be deployed in seven health facilities in the provinces of Badakhshan and Bamyan in Afghanistan, and 23 health facilities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral, in Pakistan.
“This application represents an accurate, low-cost and efficient way to track and strengthen the performance of an area’s health facilities,” said Saleem Sayani, Director of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) Digital Health Resource Centre, at a recent stakeholder meeting in Islamabad. “Teeko+ will empower health workers in remote parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan who are the first point of contact for at-risk mothers and children.”
The meeting in Islamabad at the end of November 2018 brought together senior government officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan with stakeholders from Aga Khan Foundation, Afghanistan; Aga Khan Foundation, Canada; Aga Khan Health Services, Afghanistan; Aga Khan Health Services, Pakistan; and Aga Khan University, to facilitate the successful scale-up of Teeko+.
Teeko+ will be fully deployed in April 2019 and data about the health system’s performance will be shared with policymakers and government officials in real-time through the app’s web portal to help deliver improvements in the quality of healthcare.
The Teeko app was one of a package of immunization governance innovations introduced by the Aga Khan University's Dr Shehla Zaidi and developed by Saleem Sayani of the Aga Khan Development Digital Health Resource Centre. The intervention package, which was trialled alongside the Sindh health department, brought in an increase in immunization coverage of between 20 per cent and 30 per cent over 2015-17.