Lead Mentor: Eric Obeysekare, Computer Science and Engineering 

 

2024 Impact Fellows: 

Natalie Kam ‘27
Simone Karani ‘26
Juliana Magarelli ‘27
Gabriela Quinteros ‘27
Mohammad Maaz Tanveer ‘27
Vrushti Patel '26

 

Project Description:

 

The Sierra Leonean healthcare system is chronically underfunded, with an insufficient number of skilled health workers striving to address a growing double-disease burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Rural clinics are typically staffed by nurses or clinical officers with minimal training. While there are clearly-established triaging, diagnosis, and treatment protocols for the most common illnesses reported at these primary clinics, there is often a gap in adhering to these standardized processes. How might a $20 Alexa-enabled device enable primary healthcare workers to serve their communities better? Can Alexa facilitate better decision making? Remind healthcare workers to check for underlying conditions? Nudge healthcare workers to report unusual cases to district authorities?

Over the last year, the AISHA team has developed a health education system with four use cases:
- AISHA Answers provides vetted responses to questions in 50+ health-related areas ranging from malaria to malnutrition and cholera to cervical cancer.
- AISHA Lessons are interactive 7-10 min tutorials on various healthcare topics that enable rural clinic staff to educate their communities.
- AISHA Patient Tracker is an information recall system that lets healthcare workers record patient status and location.
- AISHA Medication Tracker records the inventory of essential medication and supplies and flags sources when supplies are low.

In collaboration with the Bombali District Health Management Team (DHMT) and the Makeni General Hospital, the AISHA team has initiated three pilot implementations to learn what works and doesn’t work. Over the next year, the AISHA team will develop, refine, and implement use cases in collaboration with in-country partners, migrate to faster servers, and make the AISHA system available in the Krio language. All majors are welcome to apply.