In order to improve the health of families, women, and children around the world, organizations need to know that what they are doing is working. Most health organizations do this primarily by collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the services they provide and the outcomes they expect to see. These types of data can be effectively and routinely collected in a health information system, such as the GARA World System. We envision the GARA World System to be a health information system that will provide a people-centred and integrated solution for public health system entities to securely exchange health-data as well as access public health tools and information electronically. This system was used in 2015 as part of a community public health effort in response to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) crisis in Liberia by a national organization working against poverty and injustice. They used it to collect qualitative data on EVD contacts and report progress on Monitoring and Evaluation.
At this time, many other public health organizations in Malawi, South Africa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have limited the use of public health information systems because of the prohibitive costs involved with purchasing, implementing, and maintaining these types of systems. These organizations do vital work that helps ensure the health of young mothers and people with HIV, and some of them have set up mobile health networks and health learning programs. Without access to health information systems, they have a harder time collecting qualitative health data (especially in rural areas) and sharing their health data with other community health organizations, keeping up with health standards and procedure changes, contributing to health policy changes using quantitative data analysis, and more. SMAG Media is seeking financial assistance to establish program and organizational support to implement the Public Health Africa Network or PHAN (to consist of a number of organizations working in communities in Malawi, South Africa and Liberia). PHAN members will work together and in collaboration with SMAG Media to setup the open-source GARA platform, which would enable them to link to the envisioned GARA World System. GARA is a virtual digital health token system for public health service delivery. GARA provides the ability to digitally track and report on each activity in health service delivery with transparency and accountability to healthcare stakeholders, including health providers, governments and local health departments, non-governmental agencies, community health workers, and patients. It does so by maintaining a distributed electronic ledger of each transfer of GARA (“digital health credits”) in exchange for a health service. Ultimately, SMAG Media aims to assist these organizations in implementing and maintaining GARA. This open-source software system will position them to integrate into larger health information management systems, such as the envisioned GARA World System. If these communities implement a health information system, they will be able to share knowledge about health services, develop local and regional public health policies, exchange health-data securely using data contracts, as well as track their work and the outcomes they are trying to achieve. By having greater accountability through the use of open-source health information software, these organizations will be able to show that what they are doing works to improve health and gain additional resources to become part of a larger, integrated health information system. And with greater information sharing will come continued investment in the important work they are doing to ensure the health and wellbeing of families, women, and children in African developing countries.