Bienmoyo Foundation and Deloitte
Bienmoyo Foundation and Deloitte: MD3 Maternal Health Digital Platform
Designing an integrated mobile and web platform to support community-based antenatal care, referral coordination, clinical information, and health-worker enablement in Tanzania.
Client overview
From 2010 to 2013, Pillarsis worked with Bienmoyo Foundation and Deloitte on MD3, an integrated maternal-health digital platform designed to support community-based antenatal services in Tanzania.
The platform brought together patient registration, community health records, referrals, scheduling, alerts, telemedicine support, diagnostic-data capture, payment records, health-worker education, and reporting within a coordinated digital workflow.
The initiative was designed for field environments in which connectivity, available hardware, technical support, and clinical resources could vary significantly across locations.
Bienmoyo Foundation and Deloitte were supporting an initiative focused on extending access to structured antenatal services beyond traditional hospital settings.
The program recognized that maternal-health service delivery involved more than an individual clinical encounter. Community health workers, clinicians, referral facilities, patients, diagnostic services, training providers, and administrative teams all needed access to appropriate information at different stages of the care process.
The MD3 initiative sought to create a practical digital foundation for coordinating those activities.
The initial implementation focused on Tanzania, with field-based work centered in the Dar es Salaam region and a broader goal of understanding how the approach could support future expansion.
Digital Health and Maternal Health
MD3 Maternal Health Digital Platform
Context
Bienmoyo Foundation and Deloitte
Implementation
Integrated mobile and web maternal-health platform
Support
2010–2013
2010–2013
Multi-year digital-health design and implementation engagement
Community-to-facility workflows
Patient records, referrals, scheduling, alerts, and follow-up coordination
Integrated maternal-health platform
Clinical, communication, education, diagnostic, payment-record, and reporting...
Field-oriented delivery
Designed for variable connectivity, available devices, and local support...
Engagement at a glance
Integrated maternal-health platform design for community and facility workflows
Challenge
Community-based maternal-health services require coordination across people, locations, and systems that may not share the same infrastructure or operating capacity.
- Limited access to qualified healthcare professionals in some communities
- Fragmented communication between community health workers and facility-based clinicians
- Inconsistent continuity of patient information
- Delays or gaps in referral coordination
- Limited access to diagnostic information at the point of care
- Difficulty scheduling follow-up visits across multiple participants
- Limited access to continuing education for distributed health workers
- Reliance on manual or paper-based records
- Variable internet connectivity
- Different hardware and technical-support conditions across sites
- The need to connect clinical workflows with patient communication and payment records
- The need for practical reporting across community and facility-based activities
The solution needed to support real field conditions rather than assume continuously connected facilities, advanced devices, or dedicated technical teams at every location.
Scope of work
Pillarsis supported MD3 through digital-health workflow analysis, solution design, application development, systems integration, field feedback, testing, and implementation support.
- Analysis of community and facility-based antenatal workflows
- Translation of user needs into functional requirements
- Technical architecture and solution design
- Design of an integrated mobile and web portal
- Patient-registration workflow development
- Community-based antenatal-record functionality
- Structured electronic forms
- Patient and clinician scheduling workflows
- Referral coordination
- SMS messaging, reminders, and alerts
- Telemedicine workflow support
- Capture and association of portable diagnostic information with patient encounters
- Mobile-payment transaction-record support
- Continuing medical education functionality
- Clinician task management
- Clinical, patient, and administrative reporting
- Role-based user access
- Integration of selected third-party and custom components
- Low-bandwidth and connectivity-resilience planning
- Backup and continuity procedures
- Field-based user feedback
- User-interface design
- Testing and implementation support
- Documentation and knowledge transfer
Delivery approach
Phased implementation from workflow assessment through production support
Pillarsis used a field-oriented delivery approach that connected workflow discovery, modular solution design, iterative implementation, user feedback, and local support planning.
User and workflow discovery
Pillarsis began by understanding how community health workers, clinicians, facilities, and patients interacted across patient registration, community screening, repeat visits, referrals, consultations, diagnostic information, appointment scheduling, reminders, health-worker education, payment records, reporting, and operational exceptions.
Solution and architecture design
The team designed a modular platform that could coordinate custom functionality and selected external services through a common user experience, separating user-facing workflows, application logic, data storage, messaging, scheduling, education content, diagnostic information, and reporting.
Community health-record design
The platform used structured electronic forms to capture maternal-health information required during community and facility-based encounters, including patient registration, encounter records, clinical observations, diagnoses and notes, referrals, diagnostic attachments, payment records, and follow-up information.
Integrated workflow development
Pillarsis designed workflows connecting community screening, patient records, referral alerts, clinician review, appointment scheduling, patient notifications, follow-up visits, and reporting.
Field-oriented implementation
The implementation approach included early and repeated feedback from users and local stakeholders to refine workflows, data-entry requirements, interface design, reports, integration behavior, training needs, and operational procedures.
Connectivity and continuity planning
The solution was planned for environments where network access could be interrupted, including local or temporary data capture, delayed synchronization, structured data import, backup procedures, alternative operational processes, handling of pending activities, and recovery of scheduling and clinical information.
Training and implementation support
The engagement addressed system use and operational adoption through relevant combinations of user guidance, administrative training, technical documentation, workflow validation, field support, issue resolution, configuration refinement, and knowledge transfer.
Technical solution
The MD3 solution brought together mobile and web-enabled maternal-health workflows for community and facility-based users.
- Secure user access
- Patient registration
- Community-based health records
- Structured antenatal forms
- Patient and encounter history
- Referral workflows
- Appointment scheduling
- SMS reminders and alerts
- Telemedicine encounter support
- Diagnostic-image and attachment management
- Payment-record capture
- Continuing medical education
- Clinician task management
- Patient-facing record summaries
- Clinical and administrative reporting
- Data export
- Role-based access
- Backup and recovery processes
The platform was accessible through web-enabled field devices and was designed around variable connectivity and support conditions.
Connecting Community and Facility-Based Antenatal Care
A central goal of MD3 was to strengthen continuity between services delivered in the community and services delivered at healthcare facilities.
Community health workers could register patients, capture structured encounter information, record relevant observations, initiate referrals, and coordinate follow-up activities.
Facility-based clinicians could review appropriate patient information, respond to priority alerts, support consultations, and participate in subsequent scheduling and referral workflows.
The platform was designed to preserve a connected patient journey rather than treat community outreach, referral, and facility care as separate information processes.
Bringing Multiple Maternal-Health Functions into One Workflow
The MD3 platform combined several functions that would otherwise require separate applications or manual coordination.
Within a common workflow, users could access patient information, record encounters, coordinate referrals, schedule appointments, communicate through reminders and alerts, associate diagnostic information with a patient record, track payment references, access educational content, and generate reports.
The platform used a modular architecture so that specialized capabilities could be connected without requiring users to manage each component as an isolated system.
Designing for Variable Connectivity and Field Conditions
The solution was designed for field environments where connectivity and device availability could not be assumed to remain consistent.
The implementation considered delayed synchronization, structured data import, locally available fallback processes, backup procedures, and recovery of essential information.
Hardware and software decisions were evaluated not only for technical capability, but also for usability, supportability, cost, durability, integration requirements, and the availability of local technical skills.
This practical approach helped align the platform with the operating conditions in which community-based health services were delivered.
Supporting Health Workers Beyond Data Entry
MD3 was designed to support health workers as active participants in a coordinated care process.
The platform included scheduling, alerts, task management, telemedicine support, and access to continuing medical education.
Educational content could be made available through the platform, while training progress and relevant assessments could be recorded. Messaging and reminders helped connect users with appointments, priority activities, and patient follow-up requirements.
This expanded the platform beyond basic recordkeeping and provided a foundation for clinical coordination, ongoing learning, and operational support.
Illustrative MD3 maternal-health workflow
Care coordination flow
Community Registration -> Antenatal Encounter -> Clinical Review -> Referral and Scheduling -> Follow-Up -> Reporting
Supporting capability layer
Records -> Alerts -> Messaging -> Telemedicine -> Diagnostics -> Education -> Payment Records
Illustrative workflow only. It does not reproduce confidential architecture diagrams, screenshots, tables, or technical specifications.
Security and access control
Because the platform handled patient and clinical information, access and privacy controls formed part of the design.
- User authentication
- Role-based access
- Restricted access to patient records
- Secure data transmission
- Controlled association of users with patient records
- Traceability of relevant system activity
- Backup and recovery planning
- Protection of patient information during field use
Key outcomes
- Designed and implemented an integrated maternal-health platform for community and facility-based workflows
- Established a structured approach to patient registration and antenatal records
- Connected community screening, referrals, scheduling, alerts, and follow-up activities
- Combined clinical, communication, education, diagnostic, payment-record, and reporting functions within a coordinated platform
- Supported patient information continuity between community health workers and facility-based clinicians
- Introduced structured electronic forms aligned with existing healthcare workflows
- Designed for variable connectivity and field operating conditions
- Supported telemedicine and remote clinical-consultation workflows
- Provided a digital foundation for continuing medical education
- Applied an iterative, field-based implementation approach
- Created an extensible architecture for additional health workflows and services
- Demonstrated Pillarsis's early experience delivering integrated digital-health systems in Tanzania
The MD3 engagement demonstrated Pillarsis's ability to translate complex maternal-health service requirements into an integrated digital platform suitable for field-based operation.
By bringing together community health records, referrals, scheduling, messaging, diagnostic information, payment records, continuing education, and reporting, the solution provided a coordinated foundation for community and facility-based antenatal workflows.
The engagement also demonstrated the importance of designing healthcare technology around local operating conditions, user workflows, available infrastructure, and long-term support capacity.
This summary focuses on public engagement context and implementation scope while preserving client, clinical, and operational confidentiality.
Technologies and Solution Capabilities
Technology-stack, infrastructure, source-material, and implementation details are handled through engagement-specific confidentiality controls.
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Capabilities connected to this engagement
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Healthcare workflow modernization, community health systems, reporting, training, and support
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Mobile and web applications, workflow platforms, portals, and maintainable enterprise systems
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Connected clinical, communication, diagnostic, payment-record, and reporting workflows
View serviceMobile Application Development
Field-oriented mobile and web-enabled workflows for distributed users
View serviceData and Analytics
Clinical and administrative reporting, data export, and operational visibility
View serviceCloud and Platform Engineering
Platform operations, backup planning, continuity procedures, and support ownership
View serviceApplication Maintenance and Support
Implementation support, issue resolution, configuration refinement, and knowledge transfer
View serviceUser Experience Design
User-interface design, workflow validation, and field-based feedback loops
View serviceNext step
Build Digital Health Platforms for Real Operating Environments
Pillarsis helps healthcare providers, governments, insurers, foundations, and development organizations design and implement digital-health systems that connect clinical workflows, community services, data, and institutional operations.