PSI Digital Market Landscaping, Growth, and Sustainability Strategy Development
SCOPE OF WORK
June 2021
Background Context
In 2017 and in alignment with PSI's consumer-powered health strategy, PSI began a series of mobile health initiatives to leverage consumers' increased access to mobile technology to better meet their health needs in a cost-effective and scalable manner. By the end of the 2018, these initiatives had evolved into a series of promising pilots in four countries demonstrating the effectiveness of e-referral tools for
community health workers to link consumers to clinical providers and better track a client's health journey from outreach to service uptake. Strengthening these efforts across PSI's global network and expanding them in alignment with the organization's Digital Strategy required critical investment to modernize PSI's technology infrastructure for flexibility, scalability, and performance. With Maverick investment, the 'Connecting with Sara' project began in 2019 to meet this challenge.
The goal of PSI's 2019-2020 Maverick Connecting with Sara ('CWS') project was to advance PSI's digital strategy vision to improve consumer health and well-being using technology, with a focus on optimizing PSI's technology architecture and capacity for scale. Evolving PSI's mobile health capabilities from a supporting series of pilots to an infrastructure with the capability to support global scale required a significant investment in backend systems to improve performance, reliability, and capability to handle the high volumes of system traffic arising from supporting multiple scaled implementations simultaneously. In addition, the technology architecture supporting these initial pilots was developed specifically for those interventions and needed to be optimized with more generic functionality to allow for easier configuration and adaption across multiple country implementations. Finally, PSI's digital health implementation support team needed to evolve from an HQ-centered structure to one with more cost-effective, responsive resources closer to country teams through building a new support structure based in what was formerly PSI's Regional Technical Services Office in Nairobi, Kenya. Through these critical investments in core technology scalability and team capacity, PSI would be well positioned to work towards its digital strategy vision to improve consumer health and well-being using digital technology for faster, sustained, increased health impact.
The CWS investment from 2019-2020 powered the development of key core technology products for scalability across PSI's consumer, workforce, and data-driven transformation digital health focus areas. The project also catalyzed the growth of the Digital Health and Monitoring team's technical service delivery capacity through the Nairobi Innovations Hub. PSI demonstrated that Nairobi-based support capacity could power more cost-effective, timely, and
sustainable support to digital technology implementation across PSI's global network, acting as a model to other departments. As we look towards 2021-2022, our challenge will be to build new models for
sustainability and continue our
core product development and innovation.
Digital Strategy Vision
To deliver on PSI's digital strategy, we seek to build new models of growth and sustainability to continue to maintain and scale our digital ecosystem. PSI will invest in new Digital Health service delivery models and strengthen existing models through positioning the Nairobi Hub as a digital center of excellence with the support of multiple implementing partners and funders, assessing opportunities for new digital service delivery models, and strengthening project-based revenue generating and scaling. At the same time, PSI will support coordinated technology adoption and global goods development through digital health community influence. Where feasible, PSI will invest in the transition of digital tools as open-source global goods for use by other implementing partners and the broader Digital Health community of practice.
To maintain our competitive edge, PSI looks to continue to invest in core product development and innovation aligned with our digital strategy pillars. For consumer digital health, PSI will continue to invest in rapid integration with third party platforms via PSI's
Dynamic Web Service to help put consumers 'a click away' from quality
health information using the platforms and apps they already know, to extend on-demand support via digital companions, and link them to quality health care via PSI's DHIS2-linked
Location Services tool. For workforce digital health, PSI will continue investments in efficient digital client management using tools such as PSI's recently launched
Workforce App.
Responsibilities
Proposed Scope of Work
PSI seeks consultancy services to support the organization to conduct digital market landscaping of opportunities to externalize its current core digital products and digital service delivery capacity in the Nairobi Hub to support other organizations and partners. Once opportunities are identified, the consultant would support PSI in the development of a service delivery plan, resourcing strategy, and core product development roadmap to 1) promote more sustainable digital service delivery and revenue generation and 2) optimize existing core products for external scaling via open-source release or integration with other platforms.
Phase 1 (August – October, 2021)
- Assess opportunities for PSI to position and develop its Nairobi Global Services Hub as an East Africa regional digital health 'center of excellence', and bringing to together other implementing partners, donors, MOH, academic institutions, and regional technology companies as a more impartial, market facilitator of consumer-powered digital health best practice.
- Assess opportunities for PSI to project its growing digital capacity in the Nairobi Global Services Hub to support other implementing partners, donors, and MOH in diagnosing, designing, and delivering consumer digital health interventions. This could include revenue generation through providing digital service delivery support to partners.
- Assess competitive landscape of similar global health organizations that provide fee-based service delivery to other implementing partners (ex. MSI via Options UK), including financial models and team structures. Assess opportunities for PSI to emulate these models, where successful, in the digital health space.
- Assess PSI core products including Dynamic Web Service, Location Services, Workforce App, and digital companions for market potential, including comparison with other similar tools in WHO Digital Health Atlas
- Assess potential and market for PSI core products as open-source global goods and potential development roadmap to achieve this
- Assess potential for integration of PSI core products with other existing platforms, including OpenHIM and DHIS2
- Assess and recommend potential technologies for adoption and partners for consideration under each pillar of PSI's digital strategy (consumer, workforce, community influence, and data transformation) using digital landscaping resources (ex. WHO Digital Health Atlas, USAID Digital Ecosystem Country Assessments, etc.). Particular technologies of interest include e-commerce platforms and telemedicine solutions.
- Support strategic engagements with potential partners such as OpenHIE, University of Oslo, BAO, Options UK, and Pathfinder for collaboration, platform integration, and/or provision of digital services via the PSI's Nairobi Hub
- Produce a report by October 30 outlining results and recommendations from assessment activities outlined above.**Qualifications**
Phase 2 (Nov 2021 – October 2021)
- Develop proposed service delivery model plan and staffing structure
- Support development of pitch documents to external partners
We strongly encourage and will preference applications from consultants with presence in the global south.
Please send submissions to dhm@psi.org by July 21st.
