AFYANET

Leveraging the power of people.

AFYANET is a not-for-profit network of National Health

Institutes, Research Centers, and any organization
seeking to leverage crowdsourced health data for
disease surveillance and forecasting.

BACKGROUND
Traditional surveillance systems rely
on sick individuals to bring
themselves to hospitals and clinics in
order to begin to collect data about
disease outbreaks. This causes
significant delays in detection -
people often wait until they are very
sick to bring themselves in and may
even choose to never go to the
hospital and recover on their own.
These reporting delays and non-
reporting cases mean that many
outbreaks are not quickly identified,
allowing the disease to continue to
circulate undetected.

SOLUTION
AfyaNet's goal is to create a Digital Participatory Surveillance (DPS) network to detect disease
outbreaks worldwide. Having a common framework for disease collection in real-time can help
countries identify and forecast outbreaks faster and more effectively.

DPS is a proven methodology for gathering health-related information directly from citizens using
widespread mobile technology. It relies on citizens regularly self-reporting their health status and
symptoms through online surveys, which can be calibrated to a range of illnesses.

All data is aggregated, anonymized, and processed into datasets in a cloud-based data lake. But
this is not just an app. It's an integrated Early Warning System that turns the crowdsourced data
into valuable disease spread models and impact assessments, providing alerts and risk-
informing notifications to participating countries.
AFYA APP
Afya App is a prototype mobile application for Digital
Participatory Surveillance. It is designed to monitor cases of
Acute Respiratory Infections, particularly COVID-19. It is
currently available in English, French, and Albanian - but it can
be easily scaled to any language and country. Using a One
Health approach, the app can also be adapted to other
diseases in the future.

Afya's surveys ask questions about present symptoms, health-

seeking behaviors, and lifestyle-related information. The
responses can be compared with and complement data from
traditional facility-based surveillance and big data to provide
insights on disease outbreaks.

Data privacy is taken very seriously. We only work with

aggregated and anonymized data and strictly follow the GDPR.

VALIDATION & INNOVATION

DPS has been in use in Europe, the US, and Australia for more than 10 years and has been
proven able to:

Identify outbreak trends earlier than official sources.

Provide information about both sick and healthy individuals, including household members.
Collect information about animal health, which is essential considering that most outbreaks
are attributable to zoonoses.
Offer detailed profile data, allowing individual-level epidemiological analyses generally not
possible in standard systems.
Provide a common standardized framework for data comparison across countries.
Deliver results without requiring a large user base (although it needs recurrent users).
Correct potential data biases during analysis.

COSTS
Joining AfyaNet is both free and voluntary, and membership is valid for 1 year with automatic
renewal upon mutual agreement. The costs associated with the development and
implementation of the technology are borne by the technology partners. Participating research
centers and National Health Institutes are expected to contribute with existing human
resources for project management, and communications.
STEPS FOR PARTICIPATION
Support is on a first-come, first-served basis. Due to high interest in replicating the South
African model, we strongly encourage countries to sign up as soon as possible to be included.

To join AfyaNet, interested Research Centers and National Health Institutes should:
Confirm intent to participate in AfyaNet and sign an MoU.
Assign a project manager to organize internal efforts and serve as a point of contact.

To implement the DPS system:

The country runs a user needs survey using existing social media channels.
Technology partners adapt app design to match country specifications and survey results.
Together, we formulate questionnaires with a focus on priority diseases, which the country
translates into local languages.
The country seeks and obtains Ethics Protocol approval (template to be shared).
A communications and launch strategy is co-developed based on specific country-
specific needs and AfyaNet experience.
New application is deployed to initial user cohort
Large-scale rollout and data collection, analyses, and results.

GOALS
1. Enable real-time disease detection by establishing Digital Participatory Surveillance
systems
2. Enable action by forecasting outbreak trends more quickly and accurately
3. Participate as a consortium in research and funding opportunities

SUPPORT

More info at CONTACT

PAU ESTEVE
AFYANET.ORG pau@pebbleanalytics.com