The initial challenges of mobile field data collection – offline operation and reliable transport of media-rich, programmable forms – have been
solved. Tools such as ODK make it possible for thousands of organizations to conduct field surveys, to gain insight into population health and
to plan for effective interventions. eHealth Africa’s proposal seeks to improve upon Open Data Kit (ODK 1) by addressing the challenges that
occur after initial collection:
Field data is not readily available for analysis, it typically needs to be downloaded and staged for access by end-users
Organizations that need to officially publish field data require a workflow and automation infrastructure
Field data is not registered and tracked, which limits its ability to be reliably updated over time
Field data is not strongly “typed”, making it difficult to ensure conformance for interoperability use cases
eHA has been working on a solution to these problems for the past year and has performed initial deployments in DRC, Nigeria, Sierra Leone
and Chad. The software is now mature enough to share with the community at large and we seek collaborators and additional funding to
accelerate the roadmap. The outcome of this collaboration will provide the following benefits:
The ability for researchers and stakeholders to access field data in real time from a secure data portal (e.g. CKAN, HDX)
Support for “revise and release” workflows using a 3rd-party open-source BPMN-based workflow engine. (Canonical use case: MoH
publication of master facility lists)
The ability to uniquely identify and version each record that enters the system, enabling applications to update and submit changes without
loss of provenance. (Canonical use case: longitudinal updates to patient health history records)
Support for explicit record schemas, ensuring that data which is collected in the field is correctly structured for use in standards-based
exchanges (Canonical use case: collection of health facility data using OpenHIE / FHIR facility profiles)