Hope, the Senegalese app that saves lives by optimizing blood donations

Digital public infrastructure is helping African countries build more sustainable health systems by replacing fragmented, donor-funded projects with interoperable digital services. In Zambia, for example, the SmartCare Pro electronic health record system uses thumbprints to identify patients and track chronic diseases like TB and HIV, ensuring continuity of care, where it was historically missing.

The first of it's kind, a medical drone base has opened in Rwanda that aims to cut down the time it takes to deliver blood from blood banks to hospitals. Serving 21 rural health facilities throughout the region, the approach is also helping put Rwanda on the map as a technology hub.

In Cameroon, community members were facing a dire situation with a lack of efficient access to blood banks. Infiuss, an online blood bank, aims to fill this crucial gap in care by delivering bags of blood to patients in need by motorbikes.

An electronic human resources system has reduced health worker absenteeism in Uganda, improving health service delivery across the country. The tool requires workers to sign in and out, pushing them to show up for their shifts and allowing supervisors to more easily reward good performance and adjust staffing levels.

The Kentucky metro area has some of the worst air quality in the country, leading to concerning rates of asthma and respiratory disease well above the national averages. But a group called AIR Louisville has implemented a creative, crowdsourced solution that utilizes GPS-enabled inhalers to help patients identify and address asthma patterns based on numerous factors such as avoiding heavily-polluted parts of town, and identifying the best treatments based on lifestyle needs.

The USA is seeing rising maternal mortality rates in recent years. It shows higher rates than most developed countries, in part due to the country's lack of attention to women's health. California is reversing this trend through their California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) which analyzes data and then uses it to make recommendations and "toolkits" for hospitals to be prepared should an emergency arise in childbirth.

Low-income people often miss out on court dates because they cannot afford to miss work or leave their children. Michigan and Ohio courts have incorporated the Matterhorn “online adjudication system” to handle simple cases so individuals can participate through the Internet. The system also offers the advantage of having “less bias” than in-person trials, because the race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of the individual is protected online.

The University of Benin Teaching Hospital implemented an Electronic Medical Records system in 2011 that has now been deployed across more than 75% of its services. The system digitally links all hospital departments, including registration, clinics, laboratories and pharmacies, allowing patient information to flow electronically rather than through physical file transfers, preventing medical records from being lost or misfiled as they were in the paper-based system.

Prosecutors in Winnebago County, Illinois, are using evidence-based prosecution to increase the number of felony domestic violence cases that end in a conviction. This practice relies on physical evidence like phone and medical records instead of testimony from survivors.

Brazil’s Federal Police created a database of gold samples from different regions of the country to help confirm the origins of gold suspected to be illegally traded. Each sample is analyzed to understand its molecular composition, atomic structure, and morphological features. That information can be cross-referenced for matches with suspicious gold during investigations.