The Dida Network: responding to COVID-19

Remote consulting has a key role in improving access to quality healthcare for remote, marginalised communities and improving health outcomes. With attention to how remote consulting is deployed, it can have benefit for the community beyond health, and potential hazards for the community and wider health system can be mitigated.

As a network of partners well-connected to local communities and decision-makers, with expertise in remote consulting and a set of training materials, we realised that we were uniquely positioned to contribute to the COVID-19 response. We focused our activities on:

• Adapting and updating our training package in mConsulting for remote delivery to healthcare workers using their own phones; and
•  Piloting and evaluating the training package with healthcare workers in a remote rural health district in Tanzania.

Through these activities, we were able to secure follow-on funding to trial the training package in Tanzania and Nigeria.

Dida Network Partners

Dida was a seed-funded interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral network on remote consulting in remote, marginalised communities in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. The network brought together

• A highly interdisciplinary research team with expertise in digital health, education, medicine, nursing, social and behavioural science, health systems, economics, software development and epidemiology; with
• Partner organisations (non-academic and commercial companies) planning or providing mConsulting services to remote marginalised communities; and was
• Guided by project advisory groups in each country, comprising community representatives, local healthcare providers and experts in mhealth, digital/ telecommunications and/or business.

Our partners

• African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Kenya
• University of Ibadan, Nigeria
• St Francis College of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania
• Makerere University, School of Public Health
• King's College London. UK

• ADA health
• Babylon Health
• MobiHealth International

• Society for Telemedicine and Ehealth in Nigeria

• The Medical Concierge Group Limited

Contact us

Principal Investigator

Frances Griffiths f.e.griffiths@warwick.ac.uk

Kenya

Pauline Bakibinga pbakibinga@aphrc.org

Nigeria

Akinyinka Omigbodun omigbodun@gmail.com

Tanzania

Senga Pemba pemba7@gmail.com

Uganda

Vincent Micheal Kiberu vkiberu@musph.ac.ug

Funding Acknowledgement

The Project was supported by funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund for Digital Innovation for Development in Africa (DIDA): Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant ref: EP/T030240/1).