GSK has matched its strategic technology partner, Cognizant, with charity Amref Health Africa to build an integrated digital training and reporting tool for health workers to better serve local communities.

Cognizant announced that it is teaming up with GSK to develop a digital and integrated training and reporting system for non-governmental organization (NGO) Amref Health Africa, a leading Nairobi-based health charity that works with communities in 35 African countries to secure the right to health and break the cycle of poverty. The new, user-friendly digital system will integrate three separate reporting tools and their functionalities into one platform. The new platform will enable better planning, resource allocation, identification of training needs, and, ultimately, patient outcomes by aggregating data from the existing tools and helping users generate useful insights from it.

The African continent is experiencing an acute shortage of health workers: a gap which has only been widened by the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an urgent need for many African countries to train more health workers to help improve the health, wellbeing and life expectancy of their populations. The project, jointly funded by GSK and Cognizant, will allow Amref to:

• Enhance its health worker training programs through better visibility of training requirements and, consequently, improve the quality of the service health workers provide
• Produce meaningful, correlated reports to manage specific areas: training, service delivery, and reporting
• Improve patient outcomes, in particular for women
• Women will be able to better address their own healthcare needs and support those of their family as well as their nutritional wellbeing through the targeted support of volunteers.

In addition, the project will allow regional Ministries of Health (MoH) to deploy Amref-trained health workers more efficiently where needed, which enables the local MoH to focus on and plan broader, federal projects.

“We’re committed to helping strengthen health systems in lower-income countries and we know how critical health workers are to achieving that,” said Fiona Smith-Laittan, Head of Global Health Strategy and Operations, GSK. “We’ve partnered with Amref Health Africa for many years and saw an opportunity to bring Cognizant into the partnership to leverage its digital engineering know-how to help Amref better support health workers.”

“Our social purpose is very much aligned to that of GSK and Amref Health Africa. At Cognizant, we want to improve everyday life, using the strength and expertise of a large, globally spread workforce, skilled in innovative technologies, to develop a digital solution for a charity that supports the wellbeing of communities in highly deprived areas,” said Rob Walker, Managing Director, UK&I, Cognizant. “I am proud that our digital engineering and data analytics expertise and our efforts to integrate legacy reporting tools into a single, digital platform, will help improve access to healthcare, creating stronger, healthier and more inclusive communities in Africa. We look forward to working closely with GSK and Amref!”

“Our mission is to create lasting health change in Africa by sustainably strengthening health systems and improving access to vital care and services, especially for the most marginalized people and communities - and we are excited to have the support of GSK and Cognizant to implement more effective and impactful public health programs,” says Diana Mukami, Head of Programs and Digital Learning Director at Amref Health Africa’s Institute of Capacity Development. “We are looking forward to seeing the results of this project by bringing healthcare to those areas and people who need it the most – and fast.”