Local Partnership Launches Digital Health Tool to Decrease Hypertension in Senegal

Saytu Tension—a suite of digital solutions that will help accelerate early detection, linkage to care, and follow-up among hypertensive patients in Senegal—launched on January 27 in Dakar.

As part of the CARDIO4Dakar project, funded by the Novartis Foundation and implemented by IntraHealth International in partnership with the Senegalese Ministry of Health and Social Action, Saytu Tension (“check your blood pressure” in Wolof) will amplify existing efforts to reach more people with information about cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, and help link clients to diagnosis and health services.

With funding from the Novartis Foundation’s Health Tech Hub, CARDIO4Dakar issued a call for innovative digital tools that could address challenges along a client’s journey, including helping people know their status (for access to early and efficient care) and reduce the risk of cardiovascular complications. Seventeen ideas were submitted and Senegalese-based startup BAAMTU Technologies, in collaboration with the marketing agency ByFilling, was selected in December 2022 to work with CARDIO4Dakar and partners. BAAMTU is a digital solutions and artificial intelligence provider with experience in the digital health sector. Previously, it helped the Ministry of Health and Social Action in Sénégal respond to COVID-19 and the Hôpital Universtaire de Genève on a hemophilia project. Now, BAAMTU will help develop the necessary tools and implement Saytu Tension by June 2023.

Saytu Tension includes four components:

  • A bilingual (French and Wolof) chatbot
  • An application for patient follow-up (alerts for taking medication, appointment reminders, analysis records)
  • A web application for client data
  • A website to raise public awareness of hypertension.