In the world of digital health, the most impactful innovations are rarely born in isolation. They are the product of collaboration, in which diverse teams of developers, implementers, and community health workers (CHWs) converge to solve real-world problems. Recently, community squads developed two new features for the Community Health Toolkit (CHT), demonstrating how co-created tools can streamline the work of CHWs and ultimately enhance patient care.
The first is the development of an interoperability workflow between openIMIS and the CHT, a project driven by the openIMIS community and Medic, with significant contributions from implementers in Zanzibar and Nepal. The second is the creation of a Single Sign-On (SSO) feature for the CHT, built by a squad that included Ssollinc, Living Goods, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with support from the Medic team.
While one focuses on data flow between systems and the other on secure access, both are fundamentally about efficiency and trust. By automating claim feedback and eliminating insecure password practices, these projects free up CHWs to focus on what they do best: providing care in their communities.
The power of collaboration in action
The success of these initiatives is a testament to the ‘squad’ model, where cross-community teams solve problems together from design to deployment.
For the interoperability project, the goal was to create a digital loop between community care, delivered through the CHT, and the openIMIS insurance system.
One significant challenge of managing community health insurance schemes is being able to verify the healthcare services performed by CHWs against claims, to prevent fraud and safeguard accountability. Often, the work is recorded in the field by CHWs using tools like the CHT, while the insurance enrollment, claims, and financial processing are managed within a separate system like openIMIS.
This disconnect creates a gap, making it difficult to confirm that a claim submitted for reimbursement in openIMIS corresponds to an actual service delivered by a CHW and verified by the patient. Without a digital loop to cross-verify this information between the systems, programs are left vulnerable to fraudulent claims and lack a reliable feedback mechanism to validate the care provided.
Interoperability can change all of that.
As squad member Maxime Ngoe from Y-Note in Cameroon explained during a recent Community Roundup: “With these interoperability schemes, it’s possible to improve the system on the openIMIS side and on the CHT’s side at the same time […] to strengthen the insurance process.”
This new workflow allows a health facility to register an insurance claim in openIMIS, which automatically generates a task for a CHW in the CHT to visit the patient, verify the care received, and submit a feedback form directly back to the insurer, removing the possibility of fraudulent transactions.
Maxime highlighted the real-world difference this would make: “[It] reduces fraud and ensures the care provided is of good quality. That was based on feedback from Nepal, where implementing partners have this exact kind of problem to solve.”
The interoperability workflow introduces a new layer of accountability and data-driven insight into community health programs. It closes the loop between the health facility, the funder, and the patient, ensuring that resources are used effectively and that patient voices are heard. As Maxime demonstrated, this turns a complex process into a simple task for a CHW, ensuring the system works for the people on the frontlines of healt
SSO: Keeping the CHT secure
The SSO feature, meanwhile, was borne from what squad member Bernard Kagondu from Ssolinc termed, “The perfect software development process, where all stakeholders iterated over the design and development to meet the needs of the end user, who was ready to deploy and was in the loop throughout the process.”
He emphasized its importance in laying a critical foundation for security and scalability, stating:
“SSO has become a standard. It’s a major move towards CHT keeping up with general security standards. It’s going to enable implementers to move away from managing users and passwords in Excel sheets, which is not a proper security practice.”
By locking the front door of digital health applications, the SSO feature protects sensitive health data and builds the trust necessary for these systems to expand.
A replicable model for future innovation
Innovation is never without its challenges. Both squads highlighted the essential, hands-on support from the community in overcoming hurdles, particularly in navigating development processes.
Bernard’s key recommendation for replicating this success? “Prioritizing the design to flesh out all the ideas and consider their feasibility. I think that’s what made our process flow smoothly.”
These stories of interoperability and security are more than technical achievements; they are blueprints for future collaboration. They prove that when communities come together in a focused squad, they can build technical solutions that are deeply relevant to the people they serve. This is how we will continue to collectively create a more efficient, secure, and equitable future for digital health.
Join the next squad
The next wave of CHT innovation is here, and we want you to be a part of it. We’re forming two new community squads to tackle key challenges: building powerful custom CHT plugins and architecting a hierarchical multi-agent system.
If you’re eager to collaborate and build with a global community, learn more about CHT squads and how to join.