Mekong Collaboration Program

Mekong Collaboration Program

The Mekong Collaboration Program (MCP) strengthens regional surveillance and response systems in Southeast Asia through the development and adoption of collaboration software that makes it easier to work together, identify threats and respond quickly. InSTEDD works throughout the Mekong region, recognizing that diseases know no national boundaries.We work closely with the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS) Network, an innovative regional collaboration between national governments (Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, China) to support cross-border disease information sharing. To learn more or to visit our Innovation Lab in Phnom Penh, contact us at info@instedd.org.

What does this work look like in practice?  It means we are helping a province in Thailand report influenza-like illnesses 24 hours faster over text message than they could under their email based system.  It means our Innovation Lab in Phnom Penh is building customized tools such as an appointment reminder system for NCHADs, the Cambodian AIDs authority. It means we are working closely with the entire MBDS network to understand their priorities and build the infrastructure in the region so they can all use text message tools inexpensively.

MCP is guided by several principles:

  • Socio-technical approach.  To support governments and NGOs in introducing useful technology tools, it requires as much work on the socio-political end as on the technical end.  It is important to win political buy-in from the right people and ensure the right policies are in place so that a project has the greatest likelihood of success.  We also work with our partners to identify long-term funding sources for ongoing sustainability. InSTEDD's team is led by an infectious disease doctor, Dr. Dennis Israelski, with 20 years of experience in global public health.  We see our close partnership with the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance network, as well as Cambodia as the ICT lead for MBDS, as critical to our effectiveness.
  • Local innovation. InSTEDD's approach is to build regional capacity for ongoing innovation through our signature Innovation Lab in Phnom Penh and through support of implementing partners such as ChangeFusion and OpenDream.  We want to ensure that the region has the technology tools it needs today and tomorrow.  Local developers will create the most locally-relevant tools that have the greatest likelihood of being useful long-term. We bring in world-class engineers to advise and support local and regional developers.
     
  • National scale-up.  Many organizations introduce technology into small pilots that cannot then be scaled nationally. Because disease surveillance and response is primarily a government function, we need to ensure whatever we deploy is robust enough to handle large volumes of information securely.  We do this by building very secure technology tools and by buildingt the infrastructure necessary for large-scale use. We are working with mobile carriers throughout the region to get national mobile numbers (shortcodes) to be used by our mobile communication system GeoChat.
  • Incremental, field-driven.  Our priorities are driven by the needs of our partners - national governments, NGOs - and we build conditions in which they can discover what will be most useful to them. This approach can be slower, but it ensures that the most useful tools emerge out of the local context.  In our recent implementation with Mukdahan, Thailand Provincial Health Department, it took nearly six months of experimentation and testing before they honed in on what they would find most useful and felt comfortable with new technology.  They have embraced the new tool (SMS reporting and communication of ILI and other key illnesses) and are winning accolades throughout Thailand for their innovative approach.

2010:  Innovating for Better Surveillance and Response

Here are a few of our efforts currently underway.

  • Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network: we are working with the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS) network on technologies to support visualization and analysis of their data, and to support easier tracking of their regional metrics and scorecards. In addition, our 2010 emphasis is on reporting across the Mukdahan-Savannakhet-Quang Tri corridor from Thailand through Lao PDR to Vietnam. 
  • Thailand: Mukdahan Provincial Health Department (MBDS cross-border site): In September, 2009 Mukdahan began using GeoChat for mission-critical reporting of influenza-like illness (ILI), H1N1 and other designated reportable diseases in Mukdahan. Mukdahan set up a tiered network of Rapid Response reporting teams throughout the district, each of which is responsible for reporting on: ILI, H1N1 and other reportable diseases using GeoChat. There are several peer-to-peer groups, and a system for escalating issues through GeoChat to the provincial level. This system blends reporting with response. It has already been successful in reducing the timeliness and completeness of reports, as well as giving health staff much greater visibility than they had before. Thailand plans a national rollout of the system in 2010.
  • Cambodia CDC: we are working with the Cambodian Communicable Disease Control (CDC) Department to support a range of disease surviellance and response requirements.  They used GeoChat for alerting and reporting around H1N1 to their rapid response teams starting in May 2009.
  • Cambodia's National Veterinary Research Institute (NAVRI):  InSTEDD is working with NAVRI on their animal surveillance system, starting with a new prototype and field evaluation of an automated  national animal surveillance system using smartphones.  

Other projects happening in 2010:

  • InSTEDD is establishing strategic alliances with leaders in the regional telecommunications secotrs to help implement broad-scale collaboration, surveillance and alerting systems in the Mekong countries. As of January 2010 partnerships have been established in Thailand and Cambodia and the 2010 plan include Lao and Vietnam.
  • InSTEDD is working with the MBDS Office providing RAND to implement technologies for monitoring & evaluation of MBDS' goals. This includes creating an e-scorecard for the regional efforts from national and strategy level to each cross-border site. Release in March 2010.
  • In collaboration with MBDS and the Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC) of Cambodia the InSTEDD Innovation Lab staff is integrating technologies for Dynamic Resource mapping. This will allow traditional resource maps to be integrated with GeoChat to be able to update and query key indicators (such as free beds, medicine stockpiles, etc) via SMS.
  • The InSTEDD iLab will be running a series of experiments and evaluations to test non-digital technologies to help sub-district reporting of data in a reliable way with little training. Early prototypes suggest a lot of potential in the region and in 2010 these will be validated and developed as needed.

Selected prior work:

 

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