Reveal community hosts first Reveal forum of 2021
By Kyle Hutchinson on July 1, 2021 in News, Uncategorized
The first Reveal Forum of the year was held virtually on Wednesday, 23 June 2021. The Reveal Forum is a community event that takes place several times a year, which includes government partners, implementers and developers from ~ 28 organizations who are currently implementing Reveal, or are tracking the roadmap and are interested in using Reveal to improve the impact of health campaigns.
The objectives of the Reveal Forum are to provide community members with the opportunity to:
- give an update on any new features that have been developed, or are in the process of being developed, and what we as community members can expect as a result;
- share valuable lessons learnt through new or ongoing implementations, and why these are important in the context of operationalizing and scaling Reveal; and
- based on implementation experiences, provide a view on what is most needed, technically or otherwise, to better operationalize and scale Reveal in the future.
The goal of the Reveal Forum is to bring community members together so that all have a common understanding of the current and possible future state of Reveal; to understand who is doing what, where and how; and ultimately, to learn from and support each other in a collective ambition to scale and sustain the Reveal platform to help health and other campaigns achieve their intended impact.
The recent Reveal Forum was attended by approximately 35 community members. Kyle Hutchinson, Reveal Coordinator, opened the Reveal Forum by providing participants with an overview of the goal and objectives of the Reveal Forum, along with an update on some additional community building efforts, including the establishment of both Steering and Technical Committees.
Livashan Soobramoney, Technical Product Manager, gave participants an overview of the roadmap, and what has been, or is in the process of being developed, including insight into what these mean for the community and their implementations. In 2021, the Reveal community developed new functionality for “Lite” workflows, for both Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) and Mass Drug Administration (MDA), which allow for more cost-effective implementations where needed. The community also completed several ETL optimizations for all implementation types (IRS, MDA, IRS Lite and MDA Lite), resulting in performance gains and a reduction in sync times from 40 minutes to 2 minutes.
Following this, Sameen Babur, a Health Informatics Technical Advisor on Clinton’s Health Access Initiative (CHAI’s) Global Malaria team, gave a presentation on using Reveal for community and school-based MDA campaigns for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in Zambia and Eswatini, with a focus on lessons learnt; why these are important; and what is most needed to better operationalize and scale Reveal. Ms. Babur noted that Reveal adds demonstrated value, particularly when implementation includes:
- Increased resources to accommodate a house-to-house intervention protocol across districts, or
- The targeting of Reveal to high-priority districts where the required operations and resources for a house-to-house campaign is feasible, or
- The use of Reveal as part of a less resource-intensive point-based distribution.
To close the Reveal Form, Taiwo Ibinaiye, Data Analysis Specialist, and Poppy Farrow, Digital Strategies Specialist at Malaria Consortium, gave a presentation on using Reveal to support MDA campaigns for Seasonal Malaria Chemoprophylaxis (SMC) in Nigeria, also focusing on lessons learnt; why these are important; and what is most needed to better operationalize and scale Reveal. Key takeaways were that a ‘live-fire’ end-to-end test of the Reveal platform was viewed as a critical activity contributing towards a successful deployment, as it allowed users to identify and address any technical bugs, feature additions, and/or form changes prior to training and implementation. Furthermore, integrations with other digital platforms, such as case-management, supply-chain and mobile money platforms, as well as a focus on functionality that would allow for multi-use case support (IRS, SMC, reactive case-detection and focus investigations), could all contribute towards even more efficient programming.
If you are interested in learning more, you can access the presentation here, as well as a recording of the forum here. Alternatively, visit the website at www.revealprecision.com or link to the community at info@revealprecision.com.
