Dimagi Launches CommCare Exchange

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Dimagi announces the launch of CommCare Exchange with USAID DIV funding and a commitment to share content with the mPowering Frontline Health Workers partnership.

Washington, DC, December 1, 2012 — Coinciding with the 4th annual mHealth Summit, Dimagi is announcing the CommCare Exchange to allow organizations across the world to create, share and download mobile health applications and multimedia on the award-winning CommCare platform, part of the MOTECH Suite. The CommCare Exchange was built with funding from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Development Innovation Ventures fund (DIV) program and is the first collaborative, open-licensed ‘app store’ for the rapidly growing mobile health field.

“To date, CommCare apps have largely been developed and tested in isolation, or created for a specific health or research project. In order to spur the diffusion of innovation, Dimagi wants make all current and future innovations openly accessible among mHealth initiatives”, said Jonathan Jackson, Dimagi’s CEO. “We’re thankful for support from the USAID DIV program to build the Exchange, as it will allow new and existing users to leverage each other’s work.”

The CommCare Exchange is available on Dimagi’s open source cloud-hosted mHealth platform CommCare. CommCare is an innovative, cost-effective, scalable open source mobile platform for Frontline Workers (FLW) that seeks to boost workers’ abilities through improved access, quality, experience and accountability to care. CommCare comprises a mobile phone app and web interface made available to remote health facilities, including non-governmental organizations, public health organizations, research institutions and governments. CommCare contains checklists and educational prompts to help health workers promote healthy behaviors that have been shown to reduce mortality and disease in low-income populations.

Initially, the CommCare Exchange will be launched with a set of health applications created by world-class partners who have agreed to share their application and materials under Creative Commons licenses. Other members of the global health community also see the potential for this innovation to enhance mHealth offerings says Ann Hendrix-Jenkins, Global Health and Education Consultant at CORE Group: “Too often, global health efforts work in isolation, and reinvent the wheel. Dimagi not only creates powerful tools to support community health workers, but ALSO intentionally acts as a bridge between a range of institutions. The CommCare Exchange is an innovative (and badly needed) example of Dimagi’s commitment to supporting cost-effective yet customized health services around the world.”

Dimagi will be the first organization to share CommCare content with mPowering Frontline Health Workers, a partnership created by USAID and the mHealth Alliance (http://www.mhealthalliance.org/our-work/partnerships/mpowering-frontline-health). The partnership aims to harness the power of mobile technology to improve the performance and skills of frontline health workers. Over the next three years, the partners will crowdsource and share innovative multimedia health content, create a virtual content repository, and expand the use of mHealth applications by frontline health workers around the world. “We are thrilled that CommCare content will now be available for re-use and adaptation by many organizations around the world, which will reduce duplication and improve the efficient use of mHealth resources,” said Sandhya Rao, Senior Advisor for Private Sector Partnerships, USAID.

About Dimagi, Inc.
Dimagi is an award-winning, socially conscious mobile health technology company that helps organizations deliver quality health care to urban and rural communities. Dimagi’s core open source platform CommCare has been developed through rigorous field work by its engineers, physicians and public health professionals. Dimagi has worked in 28 countries with partners including WHO, World Bank, USAID, CDC, WorldVision, Unicef, PATH, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Acumen Fund. Dimagi currently operates offices in Boston, MA USA, New Delhi, India, Cape Town, South Africa, and Maputo, Mozambique.
(Press Contacts: Carter Powers, COO, Dimagi Inc., +1.617.649.2214, cpowers@dimagi.com)