“The team at the National Tuberculosis Program are in love with the system and they are proud of the solution.”

— Dr. Samuel Kinyanjui, COP TB-ARC, Kenya

“The SystemOne Data Deep Dive helped us to improve our referral system and see which mutations were prevalent in which regions.”

— Sarder Tanzir Hossain, Senior Technical Advisor, TB Laboratory, Management Sciences for Health, Bangladesh

“In a total of 15 minutes the physician got the alert, arranged for an ambulance, and retrieved the patient to initiate treatment.”

— Jennifer Banamu, Acting Officer-in-Charge TB Unit, Central Public health Laboratory

Evidence of Impact

On average, treatment for each patient with TB costs between $250 to $650 and takes 6 to 9 months for a cure. For a single patient with MDR TB, treatment can cost between $1,200 to $5,000, lasts for two years and only about 50-60% are cured. Containment of TB assumes that each positive patient is found and effectively treated in a timely manner to stop the spread of disease. But if a country has a loss to follow-up rate of 15-30%? Let’s imagine Country X has 50,000 positive TB cases. But only 35,000 of those patients begin treatment and the rest are lost to follow-up. The 15,000 patients without treatment may sicken further and be at increased risk of spreading disease. How many secondary transmissions would those 15,000 patients further infect? The WHO states people with active TB can infect 5-15 other people through close contact over the course of a year. With a digitized connected diagnostic system, the patients typically lost to follow-up could be accounted for. With less secondary transmissions, what is the effectiveness of a connected diagnostics system in terms of QALYs saved and DALYs averted? What are the healthcare costs of providing connected TB diagnostics?

Below you will find a list of resources where you can learn more about our technology and how it's having a disruptive impact on Global Health programs worldwide.

Click graphics to view complete research document or presentation.

SystemOne White Paper

Cost and Benefits of Diagnostic Connectivity

“A manufacturer-agnostic and disease-agnostic solution makes sense. At SystemOne, we focus exclusively on connectivity, connecting any device for any disease, routing data to the right people at the right time and ensuring that benefits and cost savings spread through the health system.”

Our Position on Open Source

Read SystemOne's Open Source Q&A.

Case Study: Nigeria

In 2014, a small study in Nigeria showed that only 50% of the MDR-TB patients diagnosed across 35 GeneXpert testing sites were being placed onto treatment. However, when GxAlert* was introduced and used appropriately, this number increased to 85% due to the improved availability, reliability, and timeliness of results to facilities, state program managers, and program enrollments officers1.

TB exerts a major economic burden on countries. By extrapolating this data to national GeneXpert testing numbers, we can make some general assumptions regarding the potential cost savings GxAlert* can provide in a high TB burden country.

In 2015, Nigeria reported 52,219 GeneXpert results with a 22.5% TB positivity rate2. Based on baseline data, we can assume that without GxAlert*, only 50% of these patients would have been placed onto life-saving treatment. However, with GxAlert*, we can safely assume that up to 85% could have been placed onto treatment. The difference in patient numbers placed onto treatment, with and without GxAlert*, is 4112 people. We know that, on average, the non-health GDP loss per TB death in Africa is estimated at $67,0003. Thus, if we assume a conservative 50% mortality rate for the 4112 patients who would not have been placed onto treatment, this results in an estimated $137,760,249 in gross GDP losses for the country. Said in another way, GxAlert* had the potential in 2015, to account for an economic savings of $137,760,249.

Kehinde J. Cost-Effective Technology (GxAlert*) Improves Drug Resistance TB Response in Nigeria. Poster. Oct 2016
Gidado M, Nwokoye N, Nwadike P, et al. Unsuccessful Xpert® MTB/RIF results: the Nigerian experience. Public Health Action. 2018;8(1):2‐6. doi:10.5588/pha.17.0080
Kirigia JM, Muthuri RD. Productivity losses associated with tuberculosis deaths in the World Health Organization African region. Infect Dis Poverty. 2016;5(1):43. Published 2016 Jun 1. doi:10.1186/s40249-016-0138-5

Case Studies

Bangladesh
March 2023

Papua New Guinea
July 2018

Bangladesh
June 2018

Swaziland
August 2017

Research & Publications

Click thumbnail to view PDF

August 2022: Open standard is the new open source

The shift in stance to requiring open standards over open source is a promising new opportunity to accelerate digital interventions in Global Health while maintaining the historical investment in existing systems.

November 2020: Driving the usage of tuberculosis diagnostic data through capacity building in low- and middle-income countries

Connectivity platforms collect a wealth of data from connected GeneXpert instruments, with the potential to provide valuable insights into the burden of disease and effectiveness of tuberculosis programmes.

July 2020 | Evaluation of a mobile application to support HIV self-testing in Johannesburg, South Africa

Human immunodeficiency virus self-testing (HIVST) reduces barriers associated with facility-based testing; however, no formal mechanism exists for users to self-report results or link to care. The Aspect™ HIVST mobile application (app) was developed for use in South Africa.

Sept 2019 | Impact of GxAlert* on the management of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis patients, Port Moresby, Papau New Guinea
Oblective: To determine if there were differences in pre-treatment attrition, the time to treatment initiation and patient outcomes in the 12 months pre- and post-introduction of GxAlert* for RR-TB patients. Click thumbnail to download PDF or click HERE to view on NCBI website

August 2019 | Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacterial Diseases:
Feasibility of a short message service (SMS) intervention to deliver tuberculosis testing results in peri-urban and rural Uganda

December 2018 | African Journal of Laboratory Medicine:
The Role of Connected Diagnostics in Strengthening Regional, National and Continental African Disease Surveillance

September 2018 | Technical Brief from MSH, USAID, IRD and ChallengeTB:
GxAlert* for Real-time Management and Strengthening of Remote GeneXpert Network in Bangladesh

July 2018 | Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics:
Racing for results: lessons learnt in improving the efficiency of HIV viral load and early infant diagnosis result delivery from laboratory to clinic.

April 2018 | Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics: The impact of digital technologies on point of care diagnostics in resource limited settings.

March 2018 | International Union Against TB & Lung Disease: Unsuccessful Xpert® MTB/RIF results: the Nigerian experience

February 2018 | BMC Research Notes:
Assessment of GeneXpert GxAlert* platform for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis diagnosis and patients’ linkage to care in Tanzania

2016 | Masters Thesis: Effects of GeneXpert MTB/RIF Testing and GxAlert* eHealth Platforms on MDR-TB Diagnosis and Linkage to Care in Sofala Province, Mozambique