LIFE app trains providers for life-threatening emergencies

A research group based at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust – Kenya and Oxford University have developed a free smartphone app for training health workers called LIFE, which was launched during  the Kenya Paediatric Association 2019 annual conference in Mombasa, Kenya.

The Life-saving Instruction for Emergencies (LIFE)smartphone app uses interactive 3D simulations of life-threatening emergenciesto train healthcare workers to save lives. The simulations take place in avirtual 3D hospital where users have to find the correct pieces of medicalequipment to manage an emergency and then use this equipment to carry out asequence of life-saving steps. At the end of the simulated emergency, if theyhave carried out the steps correctly, the LIFE system awards a digitalContinuing Professional Development (CPD) credit that is registered with theKenya Paediatric Association (KPA).

There is a desperate need for new methods to train thegrowing numbers of healthcare workers around the world, particularly formanaging emergencies in children. In Africa, approximately 1 million childrendie in their first month of life and the World Health Organization (WHO)estimates that two-thirds of these children could be saved if the healthcareworkers who look after them had adequate training and resources.

Currently available face-to-face training programmes forhealthcare workers are expensive and are associated with knowledge decay overtime, requiring frequent refresher training which only adds to the cost andinconvenience. To overcome these challenges, LIFE has been designed as a freelyavailable app that all healthcare workers can download onto their ownsmartphones. The LIFE app reminds users on their phones when they need torefresh their training so that they can quickly test their knowledge to ensurethey are always ready to act in an emergency. The LIFE app issues CPD creditseach time they refresh their knowledge so that healthcare workers are rewardedwith professional recognition for keeping up-to-date.

The development of the LIFE app was initially funded bycontributors to a crowdfunding campaign, including the Skoll Foundation, HTC,and Medicins Sans Frontieres, with matched funding from the Wellcome Trust. TheLIFE team went on to win funding from the Saving Lives at Birth Grand Challengefor Development (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, DFID,KOICA and Grand Challenges Canada). In 2018, LIFE won the VR for Impact awardfrom HTC at the World Economic Forum in Davos to develop a Virtual Realityversion of the app.