As we’ve recently had the DHIS2 Annual Conference, we’ve also completed the 2023 App Competition tied to the conference. On Thursday, the finalists were able, in 7 minutes, to present their Android or Web application, and once all were done, the audience decided which app they thought was the best.
But the competition didn’t start during the conference. Several months ago, the app competition for 2023 was announced, and the community was able to submit the application they thought would be able to impress the audience and the jury. But impressing the audience is one thing, actually having a useful application that could be used by more than just those who’ve developed it, was much more important. And all of the submissions met that criteria.
The DHIS2 community is more than just a few pockets of local organizations. We all face similar (or identical) problems, diseases, and challenges. And because of this, developing apps that can be used all over the globe is an incredibly good use of the developers’ time. This is why this was one of the important factors when judging the application, can it be reused by other organisations.
The submissions this year were of a very high quality, and the jury had a hard time choosing which app should be a finalist. They would’ve preferred to have many more finalists as many of the submissions were of such a high quality, but after careful consideration five applications were chosen to be the finalists, which were as followed:
- DHIS2 Visualisation Studio
- Developer: Albert Mutesasira
- Organisation: HISP Uganda
- JumpaDokter
- Developer: Saldi Yusuf
- Organisation: HISP Indonesia
- DHIS2 Analytics Messenger
- Developer: Eric Chingalo
- Organisation: HISP Tanzania
- Growth and Nutrition Monitoring System
- Developer: Chaturanga Manchanayake
- Organisation: HISP Sri Lanka
- Homepage App
- Developer: Ignacio Foche Pérez
- Organisation: EyeSeeTea
You can read more about these applications in the finalists page on the Community of Practice here: https://community.dhis2.org/t/2023-dhis2-app-competition-finalists/53264
We’ve had a diverse field of finalists this year. Two of the applications are built for Android and three for the web. All of the web applications were developed to be installed via the App Hub, while the Android apps are developed to be reused as open source applications.
Not all of the applications are open sourced yet, as they're still under active development, but keep an eye out on the Community of Practice for when they are released.
The Presentations
The presentations of the finalists was on the Thursday of the DHIS2 Annual Conference to the entire physical and virtual audience. Each finalist was given exactly 7 minutes to present their application and explain why the app is great, should be used by others, and therefore why people should vote for them specifically.
After the presentations concluded, there was a 5-minute period in which every conference participant was able to vote on their favorite application, and when the 5 minutes were over, a total of 155 votes were cast.
The result was close, the first, second and third place each had 31, 26 and 24% of the votes respectively, once more illustrating how competitive the field was this year, and how high quality the apps were. In the end, the DHIS2 Analytics Messenger application from HISP Tanzania was chosen as the winner.
The entire poll result can be seen on the Community of Practice here: https://community.dhis2.org/t/voting-polls-for-the-5-finalists-of-the-dhis2-app-competition/53502
The winning application
The winning application has the following description provided by the HISP Tanzania team:
The DHIS2 Analytics Messenger is an application that aims to make DHIS2 analytics data readily accessible to users. The application leverages the power of popular social messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, to deliver DHIS2 analytics to users. Given the increasing popularity of social messaging applications in recent years, there has been a growing potential for sharing DHIS2 analytics data through these media.
Eric Chingalo, the Developer of the application, has posted a longer description, a video demonstration, and a way to get in contact with them, also, on the Community of Practice. I highly recommend everyone to have a look at the application, and if you’re interested in using the application or helping develop extra features on top of it, we highly recommend reaching out to them: https://community.dhis2.org/t/dhis2-analytics-messenger/53477
Other applications
But just because we’ve got a winner, we should not disqualify the other amazing submissions of the app competition. Not only were the top-5 amazing, there were runner-ups that we felt also deserved a spot to present. Some of those got a spotlight to present their app in another session during the conference. A video of the presentations can be found on our Youtube channel, and directly, in the video below:
One of the goals we want you to keep in mind, all of the applications you’ve seen in this article or shared on the CoP during the conference, are intended to be shared! So if you feel one of the applications can be suitable for your organisation as well, get in touch with the respective organisations and see how you can work together to improve your DHIS2 systems.