Over the past decade, VillageReach has created technology refined by on-the-ground experience and enhanced by the interdisciplinary skill sets of the VillageReach team.
VILLAGEREACH APPROACH
VillageReach believes appropriate technology can and should be used to enhance health systems and development goals. Data systems include computers and software tools, but even more importantly, must include the people involved in the processes, the processes themselves, data transport methods, and everything else involved in the dynamic information collection and utilization process. VillageReach develops user-driven technology that allows for program monitoring and supports evidence-based decision making at the last mile.
Technology is critically important in supporting efficient forecasting, procurement and supply chain management at the last mile. Effective technology that allows for data analysis and manipulation can build capacity in local health workers to track and manage inventory, reduce medicine stock-outs and ensure vaccine availability and viability.
Appropriate technology also serves a secondary goal that is critically important to the health system as a whole. Health centers are the first source of data that flows up through the medical logistics system to calculate consumption patterns and forecast supply needs. Weaknesses in the data gathered at health centers are carried through the system to the national level, with consequences of incomplete or inaccurate data at every level of the system. Accurate and complete data is vital to understanding program impact and provides the basis for ongoing program adjustment to increase efficiency and produce the best possible outcomes.
In addition to its Management Information System (vrMIS), VillageReach is also working on utilizing SMS (text messaging) platforms for data collection. VillageReach has partnered with Frontline SMS to implement a pilot SMS system in Malawi and is currently working on a last mile SMS system to monitor the purchase and consumption of anti-malarial drugs with Medicines for Malaria Venture.
