Template Applications to Support All Phases of COVID-19 Response

Dimagi is developing a collection of free template CommCare applications to support the various phases of COVID-19 response.

These template applications offer organizations the opportunity to rapidly deploy job aids and data collection tools to workers responding to different facets of outbreak response, while adhering to widely recognized protocols from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Five mobile applications

Users can import these free mobile applications into their project space in CommCare and deploy them immediately to Android mobile devices or as a web application used on a desktop or mobile browser. The applications are easily customizable for local contexts, and most are available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hindi:

Contact tracing

The contact tracing application was the first template app Dimagi released for COVID-19 response, implementing the full World Health Organization’s First Few X (FFX) Cases Protocol for case reporting and contact tracing, which monitors early positive cases of a disease as well as their close contacts. Users can register confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases and their contacts; input relevant demographic and clinical information, symptoms, health care interactions, and lab results; and follow up with cases to confirm the progression of their symptoms and final outcomes. The app imports into a CommCare project space, deploys immediately to Android, and is easily customized to local contexts – and it is available in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hindi.

A demo video summarizes the core workflows of the contact tracing application, including case registration, contact follow-up, and lab test tracking. For more information on this application, see the WHO FFX Protocol documentation.

Put into practice: Terre des hommes used this WHO FFX–based screening and triage workflow to support 80 health workers responding to COVID-19 in Jharkhand, India, then partnered with Dimagi to replicate it across six target hospitals in Nepal.

Port of entry screening

The port of entry screening application is an intake and surveillance tool that reflects WHO protocols to detect and report symptomatic travelers and their contacts at ports of entry such as airports, seaports, and border crossings. Designed for a port health official working on a tablet or the web, its workflow kicks off with an initial screener completed for every traveler – collecting basic demographics, running a brief risk assessment, and flagging the traveler as high or low risk based on symptoms and exposure. High-risk travelers can have their close travel companions registered and traced, and complete a secondary screening that captures more detailed symptom and exposure information before being referred to a public health authority for further evaluation. It can be used as a standalone tool or integrated with the contact tracing application, so suspected cases captured at the border feed seamlessly into national contact tracing efforts.

A demo video summarizes the core workflows of the port of entry screening application, including patient screening, referrals, and follow-ups. For more information on this application, see the port of entry surveillance documentation.

Facility readiness and stock tracking

The facility readiness and stock tracking application helps facility supervisors assess and improve their preparedness to care for patients suspected or infected with COVID-19 – from planning before the first cases through resource requests and re-assessments once treatment is underway. After registering their facility, users complete a readiness and planning checklist covering critical areas such as human resources and isolation preparedness; the application scores each section, and repeating the checklist over time lets supervising organizations monitor changes and target training where it’s needed.

For stock, users first complete a full inventory log of critical supplies and then update it daily or weekly. The application automatically calculates each item’s usage rate, reports the number of days of stock remaining, and notifies the user when an item drops below a set threshold – so they can request more of what’s running low or flag an oversupply for reallocation to other facilities.

A demo video summarizes the core workflows of the facility readiness application, including facility registration, stock tracking, and reporting of over- or under-supply. For more information, see the facility readiness and stock tracking documentation.

Health worker training & monitoring

The health worker training & monitoring application provides direct support and daily monitoring for the providers on the front lines, who often have little time to report on what they’re observing or to flag their own symptoms. It can run on a shared tablet or an individual device, with built-in privacy measures that keep details like chronic illnesses or a provider’s current COVID-19 risk inaccessible to other users.

The app has three primary functions. First, it uses a CDC-adapted self-screening tool to rapidly assess a provider’s risk of contracting COVID-19 and screen for signs and symptoms, returning guidance on the next steps or precautions they should take. Second, a feedback loop lets providers submit suggestions for facility improvement – anonymously or not – while completing their duties. Third, education modules support providers across priority areas including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), protocols for donning PPE, mental health and stress management, risk education, best practices for the families of health workers, and general COVID-19 Q&A, all adaptable to local protocols.

A demo video summarizes the core workflows of the application, including symptom screening, risk assessment, workforce education, and facility feedback. For more information, see the health care provider training and monitoring documentation.

Sample tracking & lab testing

The sample tracking & lab testing application supports health workers in collecting samples and receiving completed test results. Through the application, users can register persons under investigation (PUI), as well as their test sample. They will then be able to update the test sample result when it is made available and go through a workflow to inform the relevant parties, including the patient, other healthcare providers, and the local department of health. Finally, this application features a training module on test result indicators and supports reporting functionality.

A demo video summarizes the core workflows of the lab test tracking application, including registering samples and editing patient information. For more information on this application, see the sample tracking and lab testing documentation.

How to access the mobile applications

Once you are logged into CommCare, you can simply visit the COVID-19 Application Library to import any of these applications into your own project space. If you don’t have a CommCare account, it’s very easy to sign up here.

Two messaging applications

In addition to the five template mobile applications above, Dimagi has also developed the following template messaging applications. Please note that due to the nature of SMS and messaging, messaging applications may require configuration support from Dimagi.

Community-based monitoring

By partnering with Turn.io and WhatsApp, Dimagi has created a fully automated SMS and WhatsApp based daily screening and tracking solution that employs our powerful system, CommCare, for case management. CommCare ensures all patients’ symptoms are recorded over time, which allows frontline healthcare workers to organize and prioritize patients based on the severity of their symptoms, while tracking when and where the outbreak has spread. For more information, see the CommunityPulse messaging documentation.

US local response system

To support COVID-19 response efforts in the United States by following CDC guidelines, Dimagi has developed a COVID-19 digital system that supports persons under investigation (PUI) protocols, case surveillance, and contact tracing. This system consists of a web application interface for approved public health officials, as well as a messaging system to follow-up with COVID-19 cases and their contacts. This system is currently being used in various US settings, including by the City of San Francisco to support contact tracing efforts. For more information, see the US COVID-19 Local Response System documentation.

Rapid diagnostic test (RDT) support

To further support organizations deploying COVID-19 applications, FIND and Dimagi partnered to develop a template application for health workers running COVID-19 antigen rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), available from the COVID-19 template app library for CommCare users on an Advanced plan or above. Antigen RDTs can deliver results in minutes in clinics, in the community, or wherever care is delivered – provided the tests are performed correctly and reported promptly.

The application walks health workers through administering RDTs, with workflows for patient registration, test initiation, and result capture, and supports frontline service delivery with:

• Built-in timers that tell users exactly when a test is processing, when it is valid to read (notified by an alert), and when it has expired – supporting multiple simultaneous timers for workers testing several patients at once.
• Visual job aids with multimedia instructions that guide workers through each test based on the manufacturer’s instructions.

It can be used as a standalone tool or as a modular template whose questions, modules, or forms can be incorporated into existing applications. The app uses the Rapid Diagnostics Toolkit – downloadable for free from the Play Store, supporting RDTs across multiple diseases – linked to CommCare via the Android App Callout feature.

The app built on a broader FIND and Dimagi partnership. As co-convener of the diagnostics pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, FIND was training health workers to roll out antigen RDTs across low- and middle-income countries, and contracted Dimagi to build a digital monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool to track that effort. Deployed across up to 15 countries, the tool tracks Ag RDT training and test uptake by 5,000 users through key performance indicators, giving program managers and country partners the data to manage and improve trainings and strengthen testing quality.

Business intelligence dashboards

For COVID-19 efforts to be effective and targeted, the data behind them must be immediately available and actionable. To help partners rapidly stand up their data pipelines, Dimagi built template dashboards across the most common BI tools, connected to CommCare through its built-in integration features. Following the release of the WHO FFX contact tracing app, we created downloadable template dashboards for Excel, Power BI, and Tableau as starting points for making use of COVID-19 CommCare data – fed in either through CommCare’s integrations or manual exports.

The Excel dashboard, part of the WHO FFX template package, summarizes the status of confirmed and suspected cases alongside reported hospitalizations, recoveries, and deaths, and charts trends for total and daily new cases plus adherence to the FFX follow-up protocol. On a Standard subscription or higher you can auto-sync CommCare data to Excel; on Community you can paste in a case export.

The Power BI dashboard reports on the same core indicators and adds more advanced features such as interactive maps built from case GPS data. On an Advanced subscription or higher you can use CommCare’s OData feed integration to auto-sync; on Community you can use a manual export.

The Tableau dashboard, available on our Tableau Public page, carries the same reports as Power BI plus reporting on death rates by age group and testing; its integration options match Power BI.

These dashboards grew from a feedback loop with partners. Early in the pandemic Dimagi supported the Togolese government’s response, adapting the WHO FFX contact tracing app to Togo’s context and standing up a Tableau dashboard of priority indicators – total case counts, trends over time, and the geographic spread of suspected and confirmed cases – within a week. That groundwork led directly to the template Tableau dashboard now available to other programs for rapid adoption.

From response to routine immunization

As COVID-19 vaccines rolled out, it became clear the pandemic was also disrupting the routine immunizations that prevent diseases like measles and rubella. In 2020, 23 million children missed out on basic vaccines – 17 million of them receiving no vaccine at all that year – even as more than 80% of COVID-19 doses were administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries and less than 1% in low-income countries.

Catching up, the WHO has noted, requires strategies to track and follow up with people who missed vaccinations, assess immunity gaps, and re-establish community demand – challenges digital tools are well suited to solve through case management, longitudinal tracking, and data analysis. Building on its COVID-19 vaccine delivery solution, Dimagi went on to offer a comprehensive Dimagi Vaccine Solution supporting both COVID-19 and routine immunization: a ready-to-deploy toolkit of six micro-applications spanning service delivery, workforce, and facility management, each usable on its own or together and configurable to local or national vaccine schedules.

Because immunization reaches more households than any other routine health service – about 90% of children worldwide – it is a natural foundation for a broader digital health record. A record created for immunization early in life can be updated over time to trigger appointment reminders, track health, and support age-appropriate counseling for years to come. To learn more about the Dimagi Vaccine Solution for immunization, write to vaccinesolution@dimagi.com.

Learn more

We will also be compiling resources, such as application documentation, an icon library, and other public CommCare-related resources. And you can always visit our community forum.

Dimagi would like to thank the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Johnson & Johnson’s Center for Health Worker Innovation, and the Open Road Alliance for their generous support to make these rapid response resources freely available.