Crowdsourcing to identify social innovation initiatives in health in low- and middle-income countries
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(2020) 9:138
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Crowdsourcing to identify social innovation initiatives in health in low- and middleincome countries Lindi van Niekerk1,2, Arturo Ongkeko Jr.3, Rachel Alice Hounsell1,2, Barwani Khaura Msiska4*, Don Pascal Mathanga4, Josselyn Mothe5,6, Noel Juban3, Phyllis Awor7 and Dina Balabanova2
Abstract Background: Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production mechanism that leverages the collective intelligence of non-expert individuals and networked communities for specific goals. Social innovation (SI) initiatives aim to address health challenges in a sustainable manner, with a potential to strengthen health systems. They are developed by actors from different backgrounds and disciplines. This paper describes the application of crowdsourcing as a research method to explore SI initiatives in health. Methods: The study explored crowdsourcing as a method to identify SI initiatives implemented in Africa, Asia and Latin America. While crowdsourcing has been used in high-income country settings, there is limited knowledge on its use, benefits and challenges in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) settings. From 2014 to 2018, six crowdsourcing contests were conducted at global, regional and national levels. Results: A total of 305 eligible projects were identified; of these 38 SI initiatives in health were identified. We describe the process used to perform a crowdsourcing contest for SI, the outcome of the contests, and the challenges and opportunities when using this mechanism in LMICs. Conclusions: We demonstrate that crowdsourcing is a participatory method, that is able to identify bottom-up or grassroots SI initiatives developed by non-traditional actors. Keywords: Social innovation, Health, Crowdsourcing, Grassroots initiatives, Participatory research
Background Crowdsourcing is an “online, distributed, problemsolving, and production model that uses the collective intelligence of networked communities for specific purposes” [1]. As a problem-solving model, crowdsourcing leverages collective wisdom by including people across different disciplines, sectors and organisations [2]. At the core of the approach is a strong belief that community members and citizens can provide answers to complicated problems for which solutions are not yet * Correspondence: [email protected] 4 College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Blantyre, Malawi Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
available. Crowdsourcing combines top-down, traditional project management with bottom-up, open innovation principles. Crowdsourced solutions are often proposed by those with direct experience of the challenge, and thus are grounded in the realities of everyday life [3, 4]. By using crowdsourcing contests, solutions to specific challenges can be harnessed by voluntary contributions from a wide range of actors. The use of crowdsourcing has been growing in science-based and health fields. Yet, this approach has mainly been applied in high-income countries (HICs)
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