QED.ai in the media
MIT Solve Challenge
ScanForm has been selected as a winner of the MIT Solve Challenge, out of 316 competitors! Our solution combines AI with scannable paper to improve healthcare.
Thank you to all our supporters, and our amazing team!
News Coverage
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How AI is Transforming the Fight Against Malaria in Africa
Intelligent Health.Tech - 2022-09-06
The real-time data that ScanForm provides enables government and healthcare officials to rapidly identify potential malaria outbreaks and implement strategies to prevent the spread of the disease. The approach also has the potential to save health systems both money and time by eliminating the need for manual, error-prone data entry, offering a faster and more affordable solution. In 2022, a Benin study led by MCD Global Health found that ScanForm allowed researchers to collect 30% more malaria data during antenatal care (ANC) visits than tablet-based data entry.
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Bill Gates: This is a ‘great’ way to use your tech skills
As an example, Gates says he is inspired by the work of William Wu, a Stanford electrical engineering PhD, who worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-founded Quantitative Engineering Design. The company builds software and hardware to improve health care and farming in developing countries.
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Here’s one great way to use your tech skills
I want to encourage software developers, inventors, and scientists to consider how they can use their skills to fight inequity. It’s deeply rewarding. You get the chance to learn from super-capable people—health care workers, farmers, political leaders—and work with them on tools that will empower them. Last year I heard a talk from a young technologist who came to this realization sooner than I did. - Bill Gates.
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[Challenge] The Life Bill Gates Wanted to Live
NEWSPICKS (IN JAPANESE) - 2020-04-24
[in Japanese] One of the most effective technologies from QED is the 「ScanForm（スキャンフォーム）」being used in Kenya. The doctor will continue to diagnose and finally take a picture of the record written on paper with a mobile phone. With the software we develop, you can translate it into each country's language and record it on an Excel sheet in less than a minute. By collecting real-time data from each clinic, it is possible to track where malaria and HIV patients are occurring.
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Meet a technologist building digital data systems for dirt
QED is a play on the Latin phrase "quod erat demonstrandum," or "that which was to be demonstrated," which is the state the team aims for in its work to bring "the hacker spirit to international development."
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Soil: big data at your feet
GATES FOUNDATION (IN CHINESE) - 2018-10-26
[in Chinese] If you are searching for mystery, you don't need to leave this planet, or even your doorstep. Because one of the greatest mysteries of the universe is underneath your feet, and this mystery is the soil. (如果你们有志于探寻奥秘，其实并不需要离开这个星球，甚至不需要离开你的家门口。因为宇宙中最大的奥秘之一，就在每个人的脚下，这个奥秘就是土壤。)
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Without open data, there’s no big data for smallholder agriculture
A few weeks ago, I spoke at a big data and open data event in Ethiopia. On the first day, William Wu, CEO of QED, gave an inspiring talk about how his team builds innovative technology to collect and analyze big data.
Video
Goalkeepers ‘18
2018-09-26
How to use your tech skills for social impact
2019-06-18
Press on projects supported by QED
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The ScanForm Snapshot - Malawi, 2023-12-01
Directorate of HIV, STI and Viral Hepatitis, MoH Malaw - 2023-12-01
We are excited to bring you the first edition of our newsletter, The ScanForm Snapshot, which highlights the remarkable successes of the national rollout of a new HIV rapid diagnostic algorithm with three ScanForm-based registers to capture all HTS data, in collaboration with the Directorate of HIV, STI and Viral Hepatitis(DHA) at the Ministry of Health.
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SU-CUGH African Global Health Conference: Catalysing Global Health Innovations for Sustainable Development
Together with the Department of HIV/AIDS under the Ministry of Health, QED was accepted and presented an abstract about the ScanForm pilot of three scannable HIV Testing Services registers in Malawi and ongoing national scale up.
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NetHope Global Summit
NetHope was this year’s biggest NGO tech summit and ScanForm was accepted to the Digital Innovation: Delivering Impact track. A demonstration of the technology was presented and recorded for 1,800 attendees from 100+ countries.
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Attractive targeted sugar bait phase III trials in Kenya, Mali, and Zambia
This publication provides status updates on three stand-alone but standardized clinical trials in Kenya, Mali and Zambia that are measuring the efficacy of attractive targeted sugar baits (ATSBs) for the prevention of clinical malaria in children. In Kenya, ScanForm is being used for passive case detection by capturing patient-level data from scannable routine MOH registers at the facility and community. All three trials should be completed at the end of 2024. By carrying out the trials in different geographic areas with differing vectorial systems and seasonal patterns, the results are expected to have high external validity for sub-Saharan African settings and will inform national and global health policies for malaria vector control.
"Attractive targeted sugar bait phase III trials in Kenya, Mali, and Zambia." Trials 23, no. 1 (2022): 640. -
Surveillance as a Core Intervention to Strengthen Malaria Control Programs in Moderate to High Transmission Settings
A group of malaria experts were contacted about the strategies they have used to transform malaria surveillance into a core intervention in areas with moderate to high transmission. The experts represent national malaria control programs (NMCPs), international non-governmental organizations and funding partners from Guinea, Mozambique, Senegal and Zambia. In facilities that lack the infrastructure to support direct data entry into DHIS2, the data must be manually aggregated from registers into weekly and monthly summary forms, then sent to district-level data managers for entry into DHIS2. There is widespread use of this traditional approach which causes major data quality challenges for timely and accurate reporting. ScanForm was specifically cited as a technology solution for these challenges because data is written once then digitized from a smartphone photo to auto-calculate all downstream summaries without human error.
Fountain, Alison, Yazoume Ye, Arantxa Roca-Feltrer, Alexander K. Rowe, Alioune Camara, Aissata Fofana, Balthazar Candrinho et al. "Surveillance as a Core Intervention to Strengthen Malaria Control Programs in Moderate to High Transmission Settings." The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2022): tpmd220181-tpmd220181. -
Researchers at KEMRI probe if malaria is a risk factor for severe COVID-19
Scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu are racing against time to find out whether malaria is a risk factor for severe covid-19 infection. This comes in the wake of increased covid-19 cases reported in the lakeside counties. As Mashirima Kapombe reports, the 18-month study will be critical in how covid-19 cases are managed in malaria endemic regions.
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KEMRI scientists examine safety of anti-malarial drugs in first trimester of pregnancy
Scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, KEMRI are carrying out a study that could provide relief from malaria for pregnant mothers. The researchers are seeking to find out anti-malarial drugs are safe for pregnant women in their first trimester.
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ICAP’s FIKIA Project in Kagera Region Becomes a Model for Rural HIV Outreach Services
Zuhura is one of the estimated 48 percent of people living with HIV in the Lake Victoria region who had not been diagnosed due to the area's severe shortage of health care resources. She received HIV testing and counseling services provided by ICAP's FIKIA ("to reach" in Swahili) project, and after discovering that she was HIV positive, received follow-up counselling and psychosocial support from Anisia, a FIKIA community outreach volunteer. Just one week later, she enrolled in care. This focused outreach and fast turnaround between testing and linkage to care is thanks to FIKIA’s unique partnership with the Regional and Council Health Management Teams, which work with ICAP to bring health care directly to communities through a model called CTC (Care and Treatment Center) outreach. The project has had such an impact in Kagera, where over 53,000 people received testing between October 2017 and March 2018 and more than 3,000 were identified as HIV positive, that other nearby regions have sought to match their success.
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Nepal Seed and Fertilizer Project (NSAF)
The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project facilitates sustainable increases in Nepal’s national crop productivity, income and household-level food and nutrition security, across 20 districts, including five earthquake-affected districts. NSAF promotes the use of improved seeds and integrated soil fertility management technologies along with effective and efficient extension, including the use of digital and information and communications technologies.
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EthioSIS
The Ethiopian Soil Information System (EthioSIS) project has covered 748 woredas and 62 confluence points, and gathered hundreds of thousands of soil samples from the entire country to develop 22 different soil property maps and fertilizer recommendations for each region. In addition, the later field survey approach will help to generate bio-physical map of the country. This comprehensive soil assessment is required to achieve an ambitious goal to map the country’s soil and compile in-depth soil fertility information, which could be eventually be used to well inform the fertilizer policies and recommendation and promote significantly higher crop yields.
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New Soil Intelligence System for India provides high-quality data using modern analytics
The new Soil Intelligence System (SIS) for India will help the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha rationalize the costs of generating high-quality soil data and build accessible geospatial information systems based on advanced geostatistics. The SIS initiative will rely on prediction rather than direct measurements to develop comprehensive soil information at scale. The resulting data systems will embrace FAIR access principles — findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible — to support better decision-making in agriculture.