This project has been shortlisted for the DPH 2025 Innovation Prize – Best Partnership
Team: Paul Reynolds, Georgiana Birjovanu, Bruna Gouveia, Guilherme Madruga, Tiago Massoni, Jailson Correira, Bárbara Rachelli, Aisha Aldosery and Patty Kostkova (Regional Directorate of Health, Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), IMIP, Space Technologies Institute, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies (dPHE), UCL)
Outline: Innovation and Unique Proposition
This innovation transforms traditional mosquito surveillance practices in Brazil and Madeira through an integrated digital system, combining real-time IoT environmental monitoring and mobile applications. Unlike traditional manual data collection, the digital real-time environmental data capture and immediate field data reporting, significantly reduced response times and improved data accuracy. The system uniquely merges field-collected mosquito data with comprehensive environmental parameters, including temperature, humidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and rainfall, collected via autonomous IoT sensors. This holistic integration enables unprecedented insights into mosquito breeding patterns, essential for predictive analytics and targeted public health interventions.
However, the true strength of this system lies in its development – shaped directly by the environmental agents end-users through direct co-authoring and collaborative partnerships across many municipalities in Brazil and Madeira, Portugal sets this project apart. Co-authoring enabled really user-centric development and fruitful partnerships allow iterative input from those directly using the digital tools ensuring the system is a living, adaptive solution – one that can revolutionize mosquito surveillance globally.
Further, to build a truly sustainable stakeholder partnerships, we have established the Vector-borne Digital surveillance Diseases Network in Brazil and launched it in March 2015, and are successfully establishing a sister Network in Portugal and South Europe – and linked them up in a trans-Atlantic Network of Networks (NoNs).
Value and Impact
The digital transformation achieved by this system delivers measurable impacts in pilot locations in Madeira, Portugal and Cabedelo, Brazil:
- Efficiency Gains: Transitioning from paper-based methods reduced data processing time dramatically.
- Improved Data Quality: GPS-tagged inspections provided precise, actionable geographic data. The IoT systems achieved over 96% uptime, delivering consistent, reliable data streams
- Enhanced Vector Control: Real-time environmental and field data correlation enabled quicker identification of high-risk areas, supporting targeted vector control actions.
- Scalability and Adaptability: The modular, cloud-based infrastructure allows easy adaptation and deployment in diverse geographical settings across the Network of Networks and beyond.
- Partnership and Collaboration:The innovation arose through an interdisciplinary international collaboration founded on principles of co-creation, ensuring active involvement and empowerment of local agents, public health authorities, and academic collaborators across two continents and with the potential to scale globally, and scale up to include other vectors.
Partnerships Network
The partnership network includes UCL Centre for Digital Public Health (UK) – technical lead, ensuring robust design, system integration, and scientific rigour and now spinning a social venture with UCL Business to run the innovation sustainably in the future.
Regional Health Directorate, Madeira (Portugal), and Cabedelo Municipal Government (Brazil): Facilitated extensive field implementation and data collection, actively involving more environmental agents, Federal University of Campina Grande (Brazil), and the VBD Network in Brazil includes over 20 stakeholders eager to deploy the technology.
Future Potential
The successful pilot demonstrates clear commercial and public health potential, laying the foundation for future expansion into AI-driven predictive modeling and broader integration with national health systems. By addressing critical vector control challenges with innovative digital health solutions, this partnership model with transatlantic Network of Networks sets a precedent for global scalability, promising substantial long-term impact on public health outcomes worldwide.
