Ghanaian digital health startup Synchora Health has launched a pilot electronic immunization follow-up system across three health facilities in the Juaben Municipal District of the Ashanti Region, using automated voice calls and SMS reminders to help reduce childhood vaccine dropout rates.
The three-month pilot, supported by D-Prize, a global organisation that funds early-stage ventures addressing poverty-related challenges, seeks to improve immunization completion among more than 300 children at Juaben Government Hospital, Achiase Health Centre and Bomfa Health Centre.
The platform digitises immunization follow-up by allowing nurses to electronically register children at the point of care. It then sends automated appointment reminders and health education messages to caregivers in their preferred local language while providing community health workers with real-time updates on missed appointments.
The initiative is aimed at addressing a persistent challenge in Ghana’s immunization programme, where dropout between early and later childhood vaccine doses can reach 50 per cent due to missed appointments, inadequate reminders and dependence on paper-based record systems.
Co-founder and Lead at Synchora Health, Shadrach Tetteh Boyetey, said the platform was developed to strengthen follow-up systems without adding to the workload of health workers.
“Missed appointments and poor follow-up don’t just affect one visit; they compound. A missed childhood vaccine dose today becomes a preventable illness or deformity tomorrow. We built Synchora Health because closing that gap shouldn’t require more staff or more paperwork, just better coordination,” he said.
Health officials involved in the pilot believe the system could improve immunization coverage while reducing administrative burdens on frontline workers.
Emmanuel Amankwa, Municipal Disease Control and Public Health Officer at the Juaben Municipal Health Directorate, said the platform would help identify children who miss scheduled vaccinations.
“We know it’s going to help us to reduce missed children and other missed opportunities, and also help to increase our immunization coverage. We want it to cascade to the other facilities for everyone to enjoy, and then scale to other districts,” he said.
Principal Community Health Nurse at Juaben Government Hospital, Bempah Philip Bonsu, said digitising records would reduce paperwork for health workers.
“At first we used to do handwriting. In this case there wouldn’t be much writing because we are going to take this data on a machine or on our phones. It’s going to limit our workload,” he said.
The Juaben deployment is Synchora Health’s first field implementation since receiving support through D-Prize’s Child Immunization Challenge.
The pilot will assess whether low-cost digital communication tools can improve vaccine completion rates within Ghana’s public health system.
Synchora Health is a Ghanaian social enterprise developing digital solutions to improve outpatient care coordination, including immunization follow-up, chronic disease management, and maternal and child health services in resource-constrained settings.
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