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Afya-Tek

Putting People at the
Heart of Healthcare

At D-tree, we believe that no matter who you are or where you live, you have a right to high-quality healthcare. Afya-Tek envisions a primary healthcare system in Tanzania that acts together as one, digitally linking communities with their healthcare providers across every point of contact, to transform quality of care for everyone.

Healthcare
in Fragments

In Tanzania, community health workers and local private drug shops are on the front lines of healthcare and are often the first point of care. Together with health facilities, these local primary care services can meet up to 90% of a person’s health needs, but patients are split between health facilities, private drug dispensaries and community health workers, with no real coordination or continuity between them, leading to errors in diagnosis, slow treatment and poor quality of care.

Health systems weren’t built for patients.

Tanzania’s health system relies on community-based institutions that lack accurate patient information, like medical histories and records of previous interactions with the health system. When one component is weak or the information is not shared the consequences can be fatal. In Tanzania:

9,000
women succumb to preventable maternal complications
600,000
children die before their fifth birthday
1 in 3
girls age 15-19 experience early pregnancies in rural areas

Afya-Tek is reimagining
this system.

Personalized,
digitally-enabled care. Anywhere.

When patients arrive at a health facility, they are checked-in using Simprints biometric fingerprint...
Patients are able to access high-quality healthcare...
At private drug shops, clients are identified using Simprints fingerprint biometric identification technology.
Community health workers, equipped with Afya-Tek smartphones, visit clients in their homes and assess...

With generous support from Fondation Botnar, Afya-Tek is improving maternal, child and adolescent health in Tanzania through personalized, digitally enabled care that allows patients to engage with the health system wherever they are: at their doorstep with community health workers (CHWs), at a community-based drug dispensing outlet or at a primary health facility. We seamlessly link together all the different points of contact to create a true continuum of care  — a new, more connected healthcare system, in which key knowledge and information is shared, treatment is coordinated and patients know that the care they’re getting at every stage in their journey is truly the care they need.

Leveraging biometrics, clinical decision support, referral coordination and data-driven performance management, this fully digitized system fills previous cracks at vital touchpoints to enable care. Along the way, data is collected, measuring and monitoring how the health system responds to patient needs, making evidence-based information transparent for meaningful policy and program decision making.

Patient tracking

No matter where a patient goes, her health record is always accessible for reliable, efficient treatment and personalized care. Afya-Tek enables people to access care where it’s most convenient for them.

Referrals

If a problem or risk is identified or the patient needs more sophisticated treatment, she can get a referral to a health facility, and her health record and referral information will already be available to the facility upon her arrival.

Biometrics

The digital system identifies the patient by fingerprint and prompts delivery of care based on previous logged interactions and the patient’s unique needs in that moment.

Follow-up

After a pharmacy or health facility visit, the system ensures patients will have a CHW to check back in with them to ensure any issues have been addressed and they received the best possible care.

A world where everyone has access to the

seamless, effective and personal healthcare they deserve

District Medical Officer
Tanzania
"To me this project has been of great benefit. I can see the outcome of this project because in my district it is almost more than ten months, I have not had a death of a pregnant woman. Even the mortality of under-five children has reduced. Even the health seeking behavior of pregnant women and adolescents has increased"
Director of Health and Nutrition
President's Office Regional Administration and Local Government
"I see Afya-Tek as a digital community health system that can assist to understand and address community health challenges, generate learning through research and integration with primary health facility patient care information systems for complete care pathways."

Maximizing Impact

280,000+ people reached
500+ health providers engaged
166,000 home visits made
3-fold increase in completed patient referrals

Reaching New Heights

We’ve only just begun. With your help, Afya-Tek can build on its success by focusing on these priorities:

DEEPEN GOVERNMENT COLLABORATION
We're deepening our engagement with the Tanzanian government to equip them with key management and technical skills to expand the system even further and change lives on a national level.
SCALE OUR IMPACT
We’re expanding to support 750,000 people across 4 districts in Pwani region, gathering evidence to measure our impact on a wider scale, and using that data to build a reliable, replicable model for other regions in Tanzania and beyond.
BUILD THE EVIDENCE BASE
We can't rely on status quo thinking — to maximize health impact, we're using cutting-edge mixed method evaluation techniques to continuously test our theory of change, understand how people are using the system, and refine our program approach to improve.

Afya-Tek Partners

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