As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, countries have since instituted movement and crowd restrictions via a series of lockdowns and curfews designed to curtail the spread of the virus. The repercussive effects have also been felt in the public health capacity-building space. There has been a paradigm shift from face-face learning to the use of diverse digital technologies. Organisations must step up to the challenge of ensuring that their staff remain appropriately skilled to manage pre-existing public health challenges and those posed by the pandemic. As face to face meetings grind to a halt, handholding must shift to digital technologies that allow for collaboration and quick technical assistance.

Empower School of Health has expertise in developing end-to-end solutions for digital learning, from developing technical content, digitization of content (storyboarding, authoring), deploying content on a Learning Management System (LMS), to sales, marketing and management of the course. We developed our own learning platform and extended our services to organizations in health, humanitarian and several private sectors. In Senegal, Empower, in collaboration with Logistimo and Gavi, supports Senegal’s Ministry of Health & Social Action to train healthcare staff in hospitals and clinics across the country to adopt an innovative digital service that will help reduce wastage and improve efficiency across the supply chain.

The Vaccines Supply Chain Management Pilot has demonstrated several improvements in the vaccine stock and inventory management and users of the digital application and platform have left glowing reports on how the pilot has resulted in increased efficiency in their vaccine supply chains. To improve the uptake and use of the digital service, users in Dakar Sud district, Senegal created a WhatsApp group to allow for ease of communication and rapid assistance. This WhatsApp group is used for:

User support: Healthcare staff request for support on using the digital service by posting audio messages describing the issue they are facing, and also attach relevant screenshots. In some cases, the district manager or end-users who have had the same issue in the past, step in and help the new user to resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved with the national team, Empower’s local consultant steps in with a technical assist.

Updates: Whenever there is an update regarding the mobile application (bug fixes, change in translations etc.) the information is posted directly in the WhatsApp group. In a few cases, communication to the district is done via phone or email to the district manager who relays the change to the end-users. Project updates are also uploaded on the group for example scheduling a field evaluation.

Follow-up and Monitoring: When facilities have being inactive for a long period, or have pending orders, the information is posted on the group. Users from the districts in question can then easily explain the reasons behind these occurrences. It is interesting to note that this type of accountability usually happens when a report is sent from the Expanded Program for Immunisation (EPI) team and then forwarded to the group by the district managers.

This case study demonstrates the need for agile learning platforms that not only allow for capacity-building via one-sided studying of courses and knowledge resources, but also allows for peer-peer collaboration, as well as technical assistance from relevant domain experts. Empower has developed and deployed such platforms and is currently scaling these solutions across Asia and Africa.