Cost effectiveness is critical to the success of immunisation programmes in developing countries. Being able to continuously, flexibly and accurately monitor the vaccine supply chain can help reduce the cost of operating it, and savings can be applied to deliver further resources to those that need them. In this project, we present a cloud-based continuous monitoring application for supervising the operation of the vaccine supply chain. The application utilises Internet of Things (IoT) location-aware platforms for data harvesting. Our contribution to this area is the design and development of a prototype continuous monitoring device capable of adapting its behaviour according to both the contexts it encounters as it passes along the vaccine supply chain and the constraints that it is given. Our prototype is sufficiently flexible to operate at different points in the supply chain, and can be used to track shipments and provide real-time remote monitoring.

By leveraging my relationships with MNOs globally we produced a SIM card which was able to roam across many networks and provide us up to date location information as cell sites were traversed. The equipment we build was also enabled with GPS monitoring where that was available.

The full paper, was was presented in the Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Symposium on Computing for Development can be found here.