Ready+
Changing lives in Sub-Saharan Africa
Overview
The increasing number of HIV-positive young people in developing countries is a significant global health challenge that governments are actively working to tackle. MadeByPi were asked to develop an app to help support the organisations working to alleviate this growing problem.
Currently, it’s estimated that over 30% of all new HIV infections occur among young people aged 15 to 25. Additionally, many children who were born with HIV are growing into adolescence and facing the realities of their HIV-positive status. When you combine these groups, there are about 5 million young people living with HIV (WHO.int).
New programs have been introduced to address this issue, led by The International HIV and AIDS Alliance (IHAA). One of these is CATS (Community Adherence Treatment Supporters), a group of HIV-positive young people aged 18-24 who are dedicated to supporting other young people living with HIV (Beneficiaries). In addition to offering support and counseling, they also track how well their peers are sticking to their treatment plans.
The goal is to create a sustainable, community-driven support system that can eventually become self-sufficient.
Discover The key to the projects success
One of the main challenges we encountered was the lack of technology and infrastructure in the test countries. Most Beneficiaries didn’t have their own mobile phones or computers. Instead, they shared a phone among extended families and had limited knowledge of standard design patterns. This made it crucial for us to find an effective way to harness technology to connect with our audience.
We identified a key opportunity in the vital relationship between the CATS and their Beneficiaries. For many Beneficiaries, this was often their only chance to speak openly about their experiences with HIV.
This is a situation we knew we could significantly improve. The current method of tracking adherence was manual, e.g. counting pills, which made it hard to ensure the data was valid and reliable. Plus, it didn’t provide any context for understanding the challenges the Beneficiaries faced.
Create A tool to support, guide and inspire
We proposed an engaging digital tool to support CATS in their daily interactions with Beneficiaries that would:
- Record and track beneficiary adherence, medication type and frequency over time
- Rewarding adherence success
- Encourage open dialogue about adherence, challenges, and mood.
- Collect and display all data on a dashboard to help identify trends and better understand the complex issues surrounding adherence.
- Enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of CATS in their roles
- Be scalable for different languages and regions.
- Provide a solution that works well even in areas with lower technical proficiency, limited infrastructure, and older technology.
Create
Using gamification to engage our users
We kicked off the product creation with a Design Sprint, focusing on how to incorporate user progression and light gamification mechanics to help keep Beneficiaries engaged.
We settled on the concept of a ‘Beneficiary Book’, a contact book that a CATS would populate for all the Beneficiaries they mentor. Each “contact” would represent a Beneficiary with an avatar created during their first session, protected by a password to ensure their personal details remain anonymous.
During each session, CATS and Beneficiaries would discuss details from the past week, including any challenges faced, whether medication was taken on time, and the moods experienced. As the Beneficiary entered this information, the CATS would use those interactions to provide targeted support for any issues. For example, if lack of food was affecting adherence, we could help arrange for more food to be delivered to their home.
At the end of each session, Beneficiaries could unlock fun accessories for their avatars and earn trophies for reaching certain milestones, like completing one year in the program. If the CATS feel the Beneficiary is mature enough, they can also view graphs that chart their progress and adherence levels.
Analyse
Learning the reasoning behind behaviour
Following each session when the CATS have an active internet connection, the data is automatically uploaded to a database. This data includes the Beneficiaries responses, automatically calculated trends/performance, their location, CAT info and timestamp. This allows senior members of the teams to breakdown this data to identity trends, monitor CAT performance and then implement change to help the young people.
A great example of this in practice was in Beira, Mozambique. We found a significant percentage of Beneficiaries suddenly stopped taking their medication on a morning, due to having empty stomachs and the medication making them feel ill. This was flagged and charity partners worked with local schools to provide breakfasts. This was then provided by the program and its impacted tracked.
Another great example was to observe the CATs themselves. Being able to quickly gain insight on whether the Beneficiaries are improving their adherence rates and overall mood as well as the regularity meeting with their CAT. This enables the partners to champion success stories as well as provide further training as required.
Really well researched and displayed great knowledge of the target audience. The app works on multiple levels to overcome a range of challenges and provides clear benefits for the user.
Northern Digital Awards - Winner
Optimise Improving the experience to improve lives
We’ve continued to build on the project with additional phases post-launch, guided by both qualitative and quantitative data, as well as direct feedback from CATS and Beneficiaries. These insights were carefully reviewed and incorporated into the product roadmap using a MoSCoW prioritisation framework.
Some key updates to the product included introducing an offline mode, adding a Portuguese language option, creating more unlockable features for Beneficiaries’ avatars, and implementing contextual surveys tailored to region, medication type, or overall performance.
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