Partners & Projects
We work with partners around the world to bring ICTs for development and research in many areas.
Here are some of our partners and projects:
World Health Organization
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is a United Nations entity that is concerned with international public health. WHO’s principle responsibilities include providing leadership on matters critical to global health, engaging in partnerships where joint action is needed to attain a specific goal, shaping the research agenda, setting norms and standards for the implementation of evidence-based policy options, assessing global health trends, and stimulating the generation, translation and dissemination of valuable knowledge.
Recently, WHO launched a new online Global Reporting System for Hepatitis (GRSH) designed to monitor progress towards the elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 as proposed by the World Health Assembly in 2016. The GRSH includes indicators for selected data elements from the monitoring and evaluation framework not already captured by other systems. EyeSeeTea developed this data entry & analysis of the DHIS2 module that WHO has installed in their Integrated Data Platform servers, which we also maintain.
WHO Integrated Data Platform (WIDP) servers maintenance
WHO‘s integrated data platform (WIDP) is based on the DHIS2 software. WHO uses this platform is for analyzing reports of globally aggregated and individual level data. WIDP is included in a larger framework called the World Information System for Control and Elimination on Neglected Tropical Diseases (WISCENTD). This information system aims to provide a consolidated and integrated view of Neglected Tropical diseases using data from official and non-official data sources. At this moment three Departments at WHO are using WIDP: Management of Non communicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention (NVI), Hepatitis and Health Work Force.
Since May 2018, EyeSeeTea has been working on the general maintenance of the WIDP to ensure that all servers are working properly, helping with any user issues, and developing administration tools & scripts for the administrators of the platform.
DHIS 2
The District Health Information System (DHIS) is used in more than 60 countries around the world. DHIS is an open source software platform for reporting, analyzing, and disseminating data. The core development activities of the DHIS 2 platform are coordinated by the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, and supported by NORAD, PEPFAR, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNICEF and the University of Oslo (UiO).
Official UiO Android Apps maintenance and development
From April 2017 to April 2018, EyeSeeTea has been in charge of stabilizing, debugging, maintaining and upgrading the UiO Legacy Official Applications . These applications enable users to register and read both aggregated and individual data stored in DHIS2 servers by using Android devices.
Development and architecture design for the new Official Android SDK
The Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo has created a new Android Application, which aims to substitute the previous four applications that manage the interaction between Android devices and DHIS2 servers. The new Application is composed by a front-end, that presents the information to the user, and a backend, which interacts with DHIS2 servers. The backend is the Software Development Kit (SDK), which is a separate product, so other developers will be able to build their own front-ends and disregard the complicated DHIS2 technology. EyeSeeTea has developed most of the initial desing that is used by the SDK.
Android demo server maintenance
While developing the Android applications and the new Software Development Kit (SDK), EyeSeeTea has also maintained the Android public server for testing purposes. This server hosts a set of DHIS2 instances. These instances offer a very useful platform to test the mobile application functionality and behaviour. A set of scripts and tailor-made tools allows us to upgrade these instances automatically (database and/or source code) and to perform maintenance tasks.
Stress and performance tests for Android apps
In collaboration with the DHIS2 development team, EyeSeeTea performed stress and performance tests to the Android apps: four current applications plus the new Android app which uses the SDK behind the scenes. These tests aimed to understand the limitations in terms of users and data for the Android applications and the DHIS2 servers. The outcome was a clear understanding of the maximum number of users/applications, several suggestions regarding the server configuration and Android development, server specification tips based on the expected number of users and different approaches and techniques to improve the performance server and client side.
Architecture and Coding advice new generation app
EyeSeeTea has also provided the framework, coding advice, and auditing to the UiO Android development team. This consulting covered technical aspects and best practices such as repository management, source code quality assurance, continuous integration tools and user feedback platforms and strategies along with development methodologies (sprints, task priorities, development cycle, team management, etc.).
As part of this work we have helped with the design of DHIS2, specific strategies, concepts, and interactions. We answered questions such as ‘how can DHIS2-SDK be designed to improve the interaction with android framework?’ ‘What information should be given to other android developers, so they can build their own applications based on the DHIS2 data model?’ ‘What is the best way to communicate to the external developers the status of the development of the SDK?’
App for the Cambodian National Center For Parasitology Entomology and Malaria Control (CNM)
The University of Oslo and the Clinton Health Access Initiative contributed to our custom applications in the Malaria Case Surveillance domain by funding new functions and creating a new application for the Cambodian National Center For Parasitology Entomology and Malaria Control (CNM). The CNM application is picture-driven, which allows literarily-challenged people to register malaria cases using an Android device. The survey is conducted by clicking on images to register the information that the Cambodian CNM organisation needs for the epidemiology analysis. CNM also manages drugs-related issues to generate a basic stock control which is centralized in the DHIS2 server to which the application is connected. The application can work offline and it sends all the information to DHIS2 as soon as the device gets internet connection. All the information from the application is represented in a simple Event-based program in DHIS2.
Save the Children Myanmar
Save
the Children believes every child
deserves a future. In Myanmar and around the world, Save the Children gives
children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn, and the protection
from harm. They do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of
crisis – to transform their lives and the future we share.
As part of these efforts, Save the Children funded the development of a new application, which is based on PSI’s Malaria Case Surveillance applications with several improvements and new features. The MCBR Application collects data on malaria testing and treatment using a picture-driven survey. It also includes job aids and a minimal drug stock control functionality. The application works offline and sends all the information to a DHIS2 centralized server once it is connected.
PATH
PATH is a global organization that works to
accelerate health equity by bringing together public institutions, businesses,
social enterprises, and investors to solve the world’s most pressing health
challenges. With expertise in science, health, economics, technology, advocacy,
and dozens of other specialties, PATH develops and scales solutions—including
vaccines, drugs, devices, diagnostics, and innovative approaches to
strengthening health systems worldwide.
The application in an open source quality assessment tool connected with DHIS2 servers. The Applications synchronizes with DHIS2 in an initial sync process, and then turns DHIS2 programs and data elements into surveys and questionnaires that the user is able to fill in offline from an Android device. This application was funded by PATH through the United States President’s Malaria Initiative-funded MalariaCare project and is widely used across several countries in Africa. The EDS was adapted from Population Services International’s (PSI’s) Health Network Quality Improvement System (HNQIS).
Population Services International (PSI)
PSI is a global health organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world by focusing on challenges like a lack of family planning, HIV and AIDS, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition, among others.
HNQIS Android App
Health Network Quality Improvement System (HNQIS), funded and deployed by PSI, is an Android application intended to analyze the global cycle of Quality Assessment on a health network. Using this application, healthcare providers can receive feedback by giving a survey to community members. In this way, a health facility and a health area can be assessed and monitored. This application also allows us to track the evolution of the independent facilities in the different health areas. The application works offline and sends all the information to DHIS2 when connection is available. HNQIS is automatically configured in a first sync process, by using DHIS2 programs such as surveys, and DHIS2 data elements as questions, allowing the user to fully customize how the information will be displayed in the application. One can also manage many other tasks such as how each question will be scored, and how often the surveys will need to be conducted. EyeSeeTea has been developing this applications since 2015. The application is widely used in many countries of Africa, America and Asia.
Malária: Testagem e Tratamento
MTT Application is a derivative of the CNM application. It is still in alpha version, especially designed for PSI’s needs in Angola. It registers malaria cases using the same principle as our other Malaria Case Surveillance apps, using DHIS2 as backend and using a picture-driven interface on the front-end to make it easier for illiterate people to follow the workflow. MTT stores both information about the cases and information about the drugs & mRDT stock, while recognizing and treating different users coming from a Health Center and a village malaria worker.
Malaria Case Surveillance Cambodia & Laos
Starting in 2015 for Cambodia, and 2016 for Laos, PSI modeled the development of the Malaria Case Surveillance applications on the foundations of the other Malaria Case Surveillance applications that developed (for Save the Children and the Clinton Health Access Initiative). These applications are able to, by using a picture representation of the different options of the survey, register malaria cases conducted by illiterate people completely offline, and send it later to DHIS2 once the device is connected to internet.
Connect with Sarah
Community workers are a key profile in PSI’s networks. They go inside the communities, sometimes very isolated and without internet connection, to sell vouchers for health services that patients can later redeem in the PSI clinics.
EyeSeeTea has developed the Android application that controls all this process for PSI’s Connect with Sarah initiative. With this app, the community worker (CW) can disregard internet connection and generate vouchers that will be sent later through a complex system that has as final storage in a DHIS2 server. The application can register biometrics from the health facility client in those cases where the client doesn’t have a mobile device and when locating a voucher identifier can be challenging.
Data Dictionary
PSI uses DHIS2 as its Health Management Information System (HMIS). Data is being collected daily from up to 15.000 sites across 60+ countries, allowing analysis of the health programs’ impact at district, country, and global level. EyeSeeTea, in collaboration with PSI, has developed an application to visualize a picture of the metadata in the database and its connection across programs, datasets, health facilities, and how the data is being used and filled across the different countries and platforms. Data can be analyzed in a tabular or graphical interactive way.
DHIS2 core development for interpretations, analytics and dashboard enhancements
EyeSeeTea is working with PSI to implement and integrate several developments of DHIS2’s core functionality. PSI is seeking to push for the use of DHIS2 interpretations across all of its country implementations. Due to DHIS2’s existing limitations, EST and PSI aim to implement several features that facilitates the adaptation of interpretations and communications among users in PSI.
The main features include the development of an interpretation sidebar in the analytic tools (pivot table, chart visualizer, event report, event visualizer and maps), improvements in the dashboard application to facilitate access to the analytical information, backend developments to provide mechanisms for subscription, interpretations comments, notifications, etc.
UIC
UIC is a unique identifier generator app. In some isolated rural areas of many countries in Africa, where patients do not necessarily have a national identification number and can only be registered in a system by using common information about their lives that they always know, this Application is used for creating automatically a unique identifier given a small survey about personal information. This ID is used to anonymize and identify patients in DHIS2 systems.
MSF - Doctors Without Borders
Médecins sans Frontières (translated: Doctors without Borders) is an independent, international medical humanitarian organization, which provides aid to populations in distress, victims of natural and man-made disasters, armed conflict – regardless of race, religion or political beliefs. MSF is a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation. MSF observes neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance and claims full and unhindered freedom in the exercise of its functions. Members vow to respect their professional code of ethics and maintain complete independence from all political, economic or religious powers.
Dhis2 apps for project configuration & management
Health information coming from the projects is the reference point for medical interventions coordination, planning and monitoring and a guarantee for early and effective response in case of emergency.
The goal of the project management app is to ensure immediate access to quality information throughout the organization in order to analyse data at field level, compress the delay between the identification of outbreaks and the response to it, and support decision-making processes improving the adequacy and quality of services offered to communities in risk.
The purpose of the project configuration application is to implement the configuration processes guiding the user through the correct data flow, as well as making transparent the different actions required (create MSF missions, projects, health sites, health services, etc…). It has been developed using AngularJS and Rest Services.
Norwegian Refugee Council
The Norwegian Refugee Council is an independent humanitarian organisation helping people forced to flee. They work in crises in 31 countries, where they help save lives and rebuild futures. NRC is a determined advocate for displaced people and support the UN and local authorities in humanitarian crises.
Dataset Configuration & Recoding Web Apps
Dataset Configuration allows, among many things, creating DHIS2 Datasets (and some other pieces of metadata) using a multistep wizard. The wizard offers a user friendly and intuitive interface and predicts some of the information based on the NRC metadata and the user profile. In particular, the application has been carefully designed to bring a sophisticated and intuitive graphical interface to manage Data Elements and Indicators, disaggregate levels and grey fields, and create metadata pieces on-the-fly. The Dataset Recoding application allows users to delete, correct and push new data.
User Extended Web App
The User-Extended Application is a DHIS2 Web application that provides an easy way to do common operations for DHIS2 users which would be burdensome to perform using the official management application. For instance, the landing page displays a list of users with some attributes information. The list allows sorting by some fields (by clicking on the column header) and single/multiple selections.
Originally developed for NRC, it is also being used by WHO.
DHIS2 core development for pivot/visualisation and indicator calculation enhancement
Starting from a DHIS2 fork, this project aimed to modify some core and modules features of DHIS2 2.23, specially from pivot tables’ web application, in order to improve and extend some of its functions. The main objectives were to allow Indicators to be created in a DataSetAttribute basis, and to provide a way and an interface to create calculated items in pivot tables by using other fields from the table.
Instruct Image Processing Center - I2PC (CNB)
The Instruct Image Processing Center (I2PC) at the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) is an entity of the European Strategic Infrastructure Project (ESFRI) in the domain of Structural Biology. I2PC provides support to structural biologists, helping them to maximize the extraction of biological knowledge from their microscopy images.
Data Visualization Tools Web Development
EyeSeeTea is currently developing several tools for the Instruct Image Processing Center (I2PC): Scipion Desktop Application and Scipion Web Tools. Scipion is an image processing framework for obtaining 3D models of macromolecular complexes using Electron Microscopy (3DEM) developed at the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology. It integrates several software packages and presents a unified interface for both biologists and developers. Scipion allows the user to execute workflows by combining different software tools, while taking care of formats and conversions. Additionally, all steps are tracked and can be easily reproduced later on.
The work is mainly focused on the Scipion Desktop Application and a wide range of web sites from official websites to a set of web services to register user activity. For Scipion, EyeSeeTea is developing a new data model to support the tomography field. As part of this work, EST is integrating Scipion into some tomography methods and confirming the expected results.
Scipion strategic and technical consulting
EyeSeeTea has provided strategic technical consulting and product management for Scipion. Scipion is an image processing framework for obtaining 3D models of macromolecular complexes using Electron Microscopy (3DEM) developed at the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology. It integrates several software packages and presents a unified interface for both biologists and developers. As mentioned above, Scipion allows you to execute workflows by combining different software tools, while taking care of formats and conversions. Additionally, all steps are tracked and can be reproduced later on.
Technical and product management support is focused on analysing and improving multiple aspects: organisational issues and tools, performance, technical risk, strategic vision, etc.
Cluster & Servers Configuration and Mantainance
EyeSeeTea has been maintaining and configuring the I2PC servers, network and storage machines since 2017. More than 10 processing machines and clusters, several storage machines with more than 1500Tb of capacity, 7 web servers, and more than 20 personal computers make up the I2PC-CNB infrastructure and are maintained by our team of EST computer engineers. As part of this work, we have developed a backup and monitoring system, a set of tools to perform bulk actions, analysis and report web and have established the security infrastructure and the network configuration for them. Microinformatics and hardware configuration are also a part of our everyday tasks.
University of the Western Cape
The University of the Western Cape is a national university of South Africa. It is committed to excellence in teaching, learning and research to nurturing the cultural diversity of South Africa and to responding in critical and creative ways to the needs of a society in transition. It was created in 1959 as a College for people of color enrolling students for lower to middle level positions in schools. In 1970 the institution gained status as a University and was able to award its own degrees and diplomas.
Libre Router power efficiency
In the framework of the Fund for Internet Research and Education (FIRE) Africa Grant, EyeSeeTea, in collaboration with the University of the Western Cape, designed a Power Efficiency system for open source and open hardware routers. The system, LibreRouter, aims to provide cheap & open solutions for community networks.
WiFi Calling App
The WiFi Calling App, designed and developed in the framework of the FIRE Africa Grant with the University of the Western Cape, is conceived to provide community networks users of LibreRouters a WiFi tool to be able to call using the cheapest method available. The application uses a set of Web Services to interact with the system and allows the user to decide if (s)he wants to use WiFi network, cellular network, depending on the cost, among other centralized functionalities.
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Located in Madrid, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and its Signal Theory Department, have focused their research in the wireless telecommunication networks for isolated rural areas. EyeSeeTea has provided its services as part of a infrastructure project for low bandwidth networks.
QoS Configuration System
Automatic QoS (Quality of Service) configuration system for embedded devices in a testbed network for URJC research project. This set of GNU/Linux tools turns an embedded system into a router with bandwidth adaptive capabilities, able to respond to network fluctuations.
The designed system implements an algorithm to dynamically adjust the Quality of Service in both a cellular network and a WiFi network by using the advanced routing mechanism from the Linux Kernel. With this algorithm, the systems securely exchange information about the real-time load on each extreme of the network. This system gives us the capacity to define perimeters of applications and how to decide which traffic to prioritize. The algorithm takes that information and reconfigures all of the intermediate queueing systems in real-time to maximize the network availability and service quality.
