Welcome to the documentation for the CHT

Why work with the CHT?

Community health systems can dramatically improve the accessibility, quality, speed, and equity of primary health care, but only if health workers are effectively equipped and supported. Advances in open source technology are making it easier and more affordable than ever to deliver impactful, dignified care in even the hardest-to-reach communities.

With more than 41,000 health workers using these tools to support a million home visits every month, the CHT is the most full-featured, mature, and widely-used open source software toolkit designed specifically for community health systems. Hundreds of individuals contribute to the CHT as designers, developers, researchers, health policy experts, health system implementers, and frontline health workers. For more about the unique strengths of our open source community and the technology we’re building together, see Why the CHT ?

What can you build with the CHT?

The CHT provides you with resources to design, build, deploy, and monitor digital tools for community health. It includes open source software frameworks and applications, guides to help design and use them, and a community forum for collaboration and support. The resources provided through the Community Health Toolkit can be used to build digital health apps used at the community, health facility, and health system level:

At the community level, community health workers (CHWs) use apps built with the CHT to register patients, conduct guided health assessments, screen for specific conditions and danger signs, and refer patients to health facilities.

At the health facility level, nurses and CHW supervisors use apps and admin consoles built with the CHT to coordinate care for patients with the CHWs, promote health practices in the community, and report health and service delivery statistics to health system officials

At the health system level, data managers and others use apps and admin consoles built with the CHT to collate and report on key community and health system data. Their work often involves following up with supervisors and nurses to verify data for accuracy and completion.

Getting Started

Why the CHT?

A great place to start for high-level context on what our community is building together. To explore the diverse kinds of digital health apps you can build with the CHT, you might also find it helpful to read about the ANC Reference App, or watch demo videos for contact tracing, covid education, or covid symptom checking apps. If you want to try out the software for yourself, feel free to request a demo account.

Read More: Why the Community Health Toolkit?

CHT Applications

Comprehensive reference material on CHT concepts and features, useful for anyone interested in understanding what features and configuration options are available for CHT apps. This section also includes quick guides on focused app development topics, and a growing collection of thorough step-by-step tutorials for developing and deploying digital health apps with the Community Health Toolkit. If you’re a developer and want to dive right into developing your own app, this is the place to start.

Read More: Building CHT Applications

CHT Core Framework

An overview and reference for development of the Core Framework of the Community Health Toolkit (CHT). Most CHT App developers are able to build great experiences for their users without extending CHT Core, but you might still find this section useful for its overview of CHT components.

Read More: CHT Core Framework

Design System

An overview of key end user personas, notes on the CHT icon library, and configuration best practices for forms, tasks, targets, and contact profiles. These materials include more detail than you will need when you’re just beginning to explore the CHT, but they become increasingly helpful when designing your own community health app for a live deployment.

Read More: Design System

Have Questions?

Want to learn alongside a community of users? Join our community forum and let us know how we can help! And if you like what you see, don’t forget to star our Github repo :)