When a mother in a rural clinic in the Pacific goes into labour, the difference between life and death can come down to whether there is electricity in the room. Too often, that electricity is missing. Babies have been delivered by the glow of mobile phone torchlights whilst critical procedures have been interrupted by failing generators or small solar systems that can’t keep up.

For those health workers, this is an obvious, everyday struggle. Behind the scenes though, another challenge exists: how do you even know where every clinic is, what services they provide, and what their power situation looks like in the first place? For Superfly Solomon Islands, this was the challenge facing them setting out on a recent project to bring solar power to clinics across Solomon Islands.

That’s where Tupaia, BES’ flagship data platform, has been transformative.

Tupaia can be used to track infrastructure, equipment, disease surveillance, biomedical assets, environmental health programs or supply chain.

A Map That Goes Beyond Medicine

Tupaia was originally designed to track the availability of medicines and health services across the Pacific. In Solomon Islands, in 2017, Tupaia was used to map out hundreds of facilities, capturing GPS coordinates, service levels, and vital infrastructure details — including whether or not the clinic had electricity. This program of data collection was overseen by the National Medical Stores and the data was subsequently used by the Ministry of Health and Medical Services to populate local MHMS systems such as DHIS2.

For doctors, nurses, and policymakers, that data has been useful – DHIS2 now has accurate coordinates for all health facilities across the country. But its ripple effects reach much further and have been sustained. Companies like Superfly Limited, which designs and installs solar energy systems, have relied on Tupaia for years as a foundation for their work.

A Tool for Second-Tier Stakeholders

Superfly Solomon Islands is the country’s only high quality-focused solar power provider, sourcing best-in-class solar components and supplying them for government, private sector, and retail customers. In the health sector, for Superfly, Tupaia has become a first step in scoping new solar deployment projects.

Roughly 80% of health facilities in the country are off-grid, located in some of the most remote corners of the archipelago. By starting with Tupaia, the team can:

• Identify priority clinics — those without reliable power or medical services that would benefit most from solarisation.
• Estimate energy needs — inferring power requirements based on the level of care and services provided.
• Plan logistics — triangulating GPS coordinates with Google Maps to assess roof space, access routes, and the feasibility of installation.
• View clinics in advance, understanding the services they provide, opening hours, and even viewing images to get a sense of the local situation.

In this way, a tool designed for health sector planners has also become a quiet enabler of energy infrastructure, bridging the worlds of medicine, technology, and logistics. The data (and the software) are available free to Superfly and any other stakeholders, as well as members of the public.

Superfly’s work in Solomon Islands incudes the installation of a solar power system at Good Samaritan Hospital on Guadalcanal

Data as the Foundation of Resilient Systems

Superfly’s work has shown how investments in data and mapping can bolster more than just health outcomes. They help coordinate efforts across sectors: energy providers, logistics companies, donors, and government agencies. The result is stronger, more resilient systems. When facilities are mapped and understood, it becomes easier to bring in electricity, refrigeration for vaccines, internet connectivity, and ultimately, better healthcare.

Lighting the Way Forward

The story of Tupaia in Solomon Islands is not just about databases or maps. It’s about turning data into action. It’s about ensuring that when a baby is born in a rural clinic, the light shining on them comes from a reliable solar system — not a flickering torch.

For non-medical stakeholders like Superfly, tools like Tupaia have been vital. For communities across the islands, they are life-changing.

High quality solar projects can be transformative for health facilities across the Pacific

Health facility assessments in Papua New Guinea have been successfully digitised in Tupaia – a GIS and data intelligence platform built by BES – in June 2025. The project, co-funded by the World Bank Group and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) was implemented by partners, the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and BES.

In Papua New Guinea, routine health facility assessments allow the national Department of Health to identify gaps in areas like health service provision, staffing levels, infrastructure and biomedical equipment.  In the past, the process for conducting these assessments was made particularly time consuming thanks partly to the use of PDF forms for data collection and spreadsheets for analysis and reporting. 

In June 2025, the health assessments were fully digitised in Tupaia which means that data reporting is now integrated with data collection with the aim of improving the efficiency, quality and accessibility of health assessments. The digitised tool provides health administrators with valuable information to make decisions about where to allocate resources to improve health services for the people of Papua New Guinea. Improved resource allocation should in turn result in better health outcomes.

Gau Baru, Chief Technical Officer, Health Engineering Services, National Department of Health, piloting Tupaia at 6 Mile Polyclinic, 4 June 2025

The key changes made through digitisation of the health facility assessment tool are the speed with which reports are generated and the quality and accessibility of data contained in the reports. Auditors can now collect data through Tupaia’s offline app, MediTrak, while customised reports built in Tupaia.org update as soon as new data syncs. The reports contain a vast array of data, including comparisons with national standards, which is summarised into dashboards and maps that use colour to visually identify areas of concern. 

The system also includes an inventory management module that uses Tupaia’s QR Code capabilities for maintaining records on biomedical and static equipment.

Infrastructure & Engineering dashboard in Tupaia.org

“The tool is one important element that we have been longing for, and having the condition and status (of a facility) known to us has always been challenging. The tool will provide us with the evidence and data we really need to help with evidence based decision making.”

Ambrose Kwaramb, Head of National Health Services Standards

Between April and June 2025 and in collaboration with UNOPS and NDOH, BES imported into Tupaia NDOH’s six assessment surveys and data for 31 health facilities, built reporting dashboards containing over 200 separate data visuals, and piloted the tool with the National Health Services Standards team at 6 Mile Polyclinic health facility in Port Moresby.

“I find the tool very easy, very reliable and user friendly. Previously we used paper which took a lot of time and some data went missing. With Tupaia we just enter data and the information is straight there on the dashboard”

Roy Matthew, Nursing Officer at 6 mile Polyclinic

BES is proud to have contributed to the digitisation of health facility assessments in PNG.

Every day, digital health systems built by BES help visualise thousands of data points across the Pacific and beyond. But data isn’t useful just because it exists. It has to be structured, validated, and presented in a way that helps people make real-world decisions. That’s the job of our data team.

In this post, we share a bit about how that happens – the people behind it, the processes that keep it running, and the work we do to turn raw data into something that matters. Our data team spans Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, and brings together a mix of backgrounds across analytics, software engineering, and biomedical research.

From point of care to point of impact

Data in Tupaia comes from many sources. Our own data collection tools — MediTrak on Android and DataTrak in the browser — are widely used, especially for surveys and field reporting. But we also pull data from other systems including Tamanu, DHIS2, mSupply, Kobo, and Google Drive, among others. These integrations are designed to be flexible: we can ingest data through APIs, database exports, backups, or spreadsheets, depending on the context.

But just ingesting data isn’t enough. Once we have it, we need to make sure it’s clean, consistent, and safe to report on. That’s where our processing pipelines come in.

Built-in checks and balances

Our data pipelines process over 30 million data points every single day. For that to work reliably, we use automated checks to detect issues in real time, before they impact reports.

When new data arrives, it goes through a series of steps that automatically:

• Remove any deleted, outdated, or otherwise unneeded records
• Check for issues like missing values, data integrity failures, etc.
• Flag inconsistencies for our team to review

If something looks off, it doesn’t just sit there quietly. A validation error is raised and the team is notified. These early alerts are often what allow us to catch issues before they make it into a report or dashboard. It also means we can go back to the original data source, and make sure it doesn’t happen again – whether that’s through user training, or requesting a bug fix in the source system.

Making it easy to report on what matters

As data is ingested, validated, and cleaned, we simultaneously structure it into reporting-friendly database views. We also apply standard calculations at this database view layer, so that metrics are consistent from one visualisation to another. This helps ensure dashboards are fast and reliable, while also keeping the reporting logic clear and easy to follow. Tamanu reports use straightforward queries on these views, and the data from them flows through the rest of our data pipelines. Once in Tupaia’s Viz Builder, they can be combined, filtered, and visualised however needed.

A real-world example: forecasting medication shortages

In September 2023, the Samoan Ministry of Health carried out a mass drug administration for lymphatic filariasis and scabies. Doses were weight-based, and recorded each evening in Tamanu. These were visualised immediately in Tupaia.

After a few days, the dashboards showed something unexpected: stock levels were dropping faster than anticipated. Because of how we model and visualise data, the Ministry was able to quickly spot the trend and take action — placing an emergency order for more medication to ensure the campaign could continue.

That’s the kind of impact we want our data systems to have: helping people see the issue early, and act on it.

To read more about this case study and others like it, visit Data for decision making case studies from the Pacific.

Why it matters

Whether it’s a national outbreak dashboard, a forecasting tool, or a facility-level report, our goal is always the same: to make health data useful. Only then can it be used to improve patient safety, make better policy decisions, or strengthen public health programming.

It takes a solid system, a clear process, and a good team to get there. Fortunately, we have all three.

What happens to all the data collected in Tupaia MediTrak about basic health facility infrastructure? Information on areas including water availability, electricity, and and hygiene services? With the support of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and TetraTech International, BES has been working with the Fiji MHMS on a novel, data-based approach to implement infrastructure repairs at the 20 highest-need health facilities in the country.

How were these facilities identified? The work is part of the national health supply chain reform project, which started with a national Tupaia survey. BES are working with MHMS and the Fiji Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Service (FPBS) to improve the supply chain for the national health system and as part of that work, identifying, locating, and gaining baseline data from all facilities was identified as an early priority.

Vunivutu door locks: before and after

MHMS staff, with the support of BES Project Managers, fanned out across the country in 2022, touring to nearly every health facility in the country to collect invaluable information in a structured, standardised way using Tupaia MediTrak. MediTrak is a free, open-source health data collection app designed specifically for remote settings in the Indo-Pacific region. Data can be collected offline against any entity – fridges, clinics, houses, communities, water sources etc – and aggregated using Tupaia’s powerful data platform. During the initial data collection round, staff built a snapshot of medicines availability across all facilities but in addition looked at issues such as basic medical equipment, staff training needs, shelving and storage infrastructure, water supply, physical access and WASH facilities.

With every facility in Fiji comprehensively assessed, BES and MHMS used Tupaia to identify the twenty lowest performing facilities across the country. These 20 facilities were then targeted for low-cost but high-impact repairs, maintenance, and training activities to help improve the average performance of all facilities in the country. BES staff coordinate the follow-up maintenance visits to these 20 facilities, whilst MHMS staff lead on the ground and help guide the activities most important to improving patient experiences. The work has also been delivered through a gender and disability lens, highlighting gaps in areas such as wheelchair accessibility, menstrual care facilities, and safe working environments for female staff at night.

This follow-up mechanism ensures that data collected in surveys is actioned, resulting in tangible improvements to Fiji’s basic health facility infrastructure. The data-led approach ensures efficiency – with a limited bucket of resources, focusing on the facilities in most need is imperative, as well as knowing exactly what is required in each of those facilities, rather than trying to implement a one-size-fits-all approach.

Lomaivuna water tanks: before and after

At Moce Nursing Station, a remote facility in Fiji’s Eastern Division, the program has recently enabled:

• Installation of solar panels, meaning the facility can now provide patient care at night, which was not previously possible. They can now also use electronic equipment, including the concentrator and nebuliser machine, and charge their mSupply tablet to place orders for essential medicines and medical supplies to FPBS.
• Water pipe repair, resulting in restoration of water supply to the facility, and repair of two toilets for patients.
• Repair of the facility door and lock replacement, improving security.

“Now I don’t have to worry about trespassers entering the station after hours,” said the nurse at Moce Nursing Station. “I’m very thankful to [the] Tupaia project for all that’s being done for Moce Nursing Station. It has made my work easier and enabled me to carry out my nursing duties. Also, the people of Moce are very happy with the maintenance done as they have also benefit[ed] from it… I have 2 patients admitted at the moment, and it’s good to see them using the toilets in the station instead of walking to my quarters to use the washroom.”

Moce toilets: before and after

Other facilities that have benefited from the project include Kabara Health Centre, Naduri Health Centre, Navakaka Nursing Station Savusavu Health Centre, Vunivutu Nursing Station, Rakiraki Health Centre, and more.

BES is currently working with the Fiji MHMS to plan the next round of national surveys this year, when staff will visit every health facility in the country with MHMS staff to assess infrastructure, supply chain, and basic clinic services – and begin the cycle of data for action again!

BES are set to enhance digital product ownership and leadership in the Pacific with the doors of a new Support Centre, based in Suva, Fiji, opening this week. 

Two full-time, Fijian staff will provide service desk support to BES platform users across the Pacific region – covering Tamanu, Tupaia and SENAITE.. Participating countries can directly access the Support Centre through the Tamanu platform or explore the revamped support website on mobile or desktop.

“The goal is to continue to localise tech-support, to create jobs and to add to the overall sustainability of the digital health ecosystem in the Pacific,” said Michael, Chief Executive Officer of BES.

“We know the Pacific is leading in implementing digital health technology. A local Support Centre just adds to this,” said Michael. 

“The best support is Pacific-based. The local team appreciates the Pacific context; such as internet outages, power interruptions and often a lack of local IT support. They know the culture, communication styles and for the health sector – the work landscape,” said Michael.

The support team will also be in the same timezone as its users. A benefit that cannot be understated. 

“It’s a simple thing, but when you’re having a tech-issue you don’t want help in ten hours or the next-day. Having a local support team will improve response times,” says Rahul Prasad who will help lead the support desk. 

Backed by Zendesk, a popular service desk system in the tech-industry, requests for help to the Support Centre can be raised in multiple ways. Email, online forms, and LiveChat can be used, with Viber being piloted later this year as another way to ask for assistance. 

Photo: Zendesk software will help the team manage requests coming from multiple sources across the Pacific

The LiveChat is powered by an intelligent ChatBot named Waka – who is programmed to respond to common questions with answers. While Zendesk keeps track of all the queries, the support team can work more efficiently with greater oversight of regional trends or issues. 

“Waka is a Polynesian word for ‘canoe’ and a Melanesian Pijin word for ‘work’”, explains Michael. “Our staff liked the idea of using Waka to go and get help, as you might do in a canoe throughout the islands – and to support their work” 

Equipped with dashboards and visual workflows, the support team can gain data-based insights for proactive monitoring, training, and ultimately, the optimised use of BES-supported platforms; Tamanu, Tupaia, SENAITE and DHIS2.’‘ 

A comprehensive Knowledge Centre with a search function is also at users’ finger tips. This helps users by providing easy to find training articles with step-by-step guides and lots of screenshots. 

The Support Centre’s initial roll-out serves BES customers based in Nauru. BES were fortunate to be able to provide face-to-face training for 61 dedicated health professionals from the Republic of Nauru Hospital and Public Health Clinics on the new BES Support Centre.

Photo: Clinical staff from the Nauru Ministry of Health receive training in accessing the new support centre and ‘Waka’

“A heartfelt thank-you to all our Nauru users for embracing this new platform. Your open-mindedness and willingness to adapt will undoubtedly enhance the benefit you’re getting from the systems and help you serve your communities even better in the long run.” – A message from BES staff member Alex to training participants in Nauru.

The full roll-out of BES Support Centre services will expand to include other Pacific countries in early 2024, where BES products are used. Palau is next onboard in mid-February, 2024. 

Any country that has Tamanu v1.36.0 (or above) and ‘accidently or curiously’ clicks the ‘Support Centre’ button at the bottom left of Tamanu (when logged in) can raise a ticket as well!

The future is digital, and it’s in the Pacific!

#BeyondEssentialSystems #SupportCentreLaunch #HealthcareInnovation #EmpoweringCommunities #Sustainability #Tamanu #Tupaia

Jessica believes that ‘continued ‘South to South’ cooperation in the region can foster stronger relationships and increase the potential for healthcare workforce mobilisation in the Pacific’.   

Everyone in the Pacific benefits when Pacific islands can request staff support with broader experience and knowledge during staff shortages, emergencies, and crises and to support health campaign rollouts. Exchanging skills and staff within the Pacific has the added benefit of cultural understanding and nuance. This knowledge shortens the learning curve in a new setting for staff with greater familiarity with similar healthcare challenges. 

The regional skill exchanges work towards cultural and contextual understanding. They focus on respect for national sovereignty and shared responsibility, strengthening the region’s healthcare systems. 

Knowing how to communicate culturally and speak with a regional voice is more likely to lead to real and effective change, even in the diverse language and cultural systems of the Pacific region. 

‘Knowing the software is one thing, but looking around and seeing what can be improved diplomatically so that real change happens is important too’, says Elizabeth Bryson, who visited Niue on the DTAC program skills exchange from the Cook Islands. In April, DTAC invited Elizabeth to visit Niue to support the move from paper to digitisation of their pharmacy systems by implementing mSupply. 

 Elizabeth arrived in Niue with the public health team and got straight into the stocktake of one of their three locations. She met with the pharmacy team and had many suggestions to help to create a safer and more efficient workplace, skills she had already learned from her work in the Cook Islands.

As a champion of change, Elizabeth believes that ‘’Building relationships is so important across the Pacific.’ She never imagined that she would ever visit Niue to support their health system, but now she can see that it is a practical solution with so much to gain from both sides. She takes with her skills and knowledge that will impact a project she is working on in the outer islands of her country, where the medicine supply can be difficult to manage. 

Elizabeth hopes that regional collaboration can continue between countries in the Pacific and that she can take the lessons learned from her experience to continue to strengthen health systems in the Cook Islands. She can see that the much more isolated Niue and outer Cook Islands have some similarities – and she now has some insight into possible problems and solutions because of her experience with skills exchange in Niue. 

BES and the mSupply Foundation support the Pacific skills exchange through peer-to-peer networks between PICTs with the support of DFAT and MFAT.

Elizabeth Bryson (The Cook Islands Ministry of Health) and Jessica Jago (DTAC) enjoy beautiful Niue in between stocktakes. The Pharmacy Dispensary Team: Ebony Feleti and Seddon Paka with Elizabeth Bryson from the Cook Islands Ministry of Health. The Public Health and Nursing Team, organising a stocktake of their medical consumables: Andy Manu, Reuben Siataga with nurse, Fonokalafi Moleni, and Jessica Jago (DTAC Project Manager). Ebony Feleti, organising the pharmacy. Team photo celebrating the launch of mSupply for the Public Health Department in Niue. Jessica Jago and Elizabeth Bryson after a long day of stocktake. Nurse, Fonokalafi Moleni in the pharmacy.

On December 17th 2022, Palau’s National Hospital held an official launch event for ‘Project Olangch,’ celebrating a comprehensive digitisation of their health information system and a truly transformative moment for healthcare in the country.

Some very special guests helped to mark the occasion, including Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr, Palau Minister for Health Gaafar J. Uherbelau, and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.

L-R: Minister of State Gustav Aitaro, Australian Ambassador to Palau Richelle Turner, Shadow FM Simon Birmingham, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., Health Minister Gaafar J. Uherbelau, Delegate Warren Umetaro, Senator Stevenson J. Kuartei.

Minister for Health Gaafar J. Uherbelau described Project Olangch as a “large leap” for Palau’s health sector. “In establishing Tamanu, Tupaia, and mSupply,” he said, “not only are we adapting and implementing newer and greener health information technology that will further streamline hospital operations, improve security, access, archiving and sharing of patient data and health information, more importantly, this initiative will allow us to provide more efficient care and services to patients and clients, not just here at The Belau National Hospital, but across the health sector to private clinics and healthcare providers.”

Senator Penny Wong also spoke warmly about the project, describing it in her speech as “a demonstration of practical co-operation…on things that matter.” 

One of the biggest highlights of the launch was receiving glowing feedback from many of the hospital staff, who praised the increased ease and efficiency of their workflow as well as an ability to make better-informed decisions regarding patient care.

From L-R: BES Project Officer Ming Ong, Hospital Administration Director Darnelle Worswick, Hospital Services Director Ngirachisau Mekoll, Global Health Administrator Omengkar Wally, Project Managers Rodney Miller and Georgia Lack, ICT administrator Smau Erungel.

About the Project

Project Olangch was initiated in 2020, when the Australian Embassy had a conversation with the Palau Ministry of Health and Human Services (PMHHS) as COVID-19 struck. The Palau MHHS partnered with Beyond Essential in 2021, with support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to deploy our three platforms – Tamanu, Tupaia, and mSupply.

These three applications working in concert provide a comprehensive replacement for the paper-based system previously in use at Belau National Hospital. Here’s a quick introduction to the integrated digital health ecosystem:

-With Tamanu, staff now have digital tools at the patient bedside, offering medical history, data capture, and clinical decision support to help them work more quickly and safely.

-Aggregated health data is then visualised in Tupaia to assist with automated disease surveillance and public health reporting.

-When a patient presents at the pharmacy, their medication record can be managed in mSupply and their medicine can be safely dispensed.

The ecosystem improves efficiencies, reduces waste and costs, and improves access to critical health data, resulting in better health outcomes for all.

Dr. Maribeth Caguingin, Emergency Room Physician at BNH.

A Note on ‘Olangch’

Olangch is an important Palauan word meaning ‘a sign, distinguishing mark, indicator, or anything functioning to give directions.’ Olangch was selected by the ministry to describe a pivotal point in Palau’s healthcare journey, as well as to describe the tools the project implemented, which organise data to provide clearer directions for health professionals.

At Beyond Essential, we are constantly working on new upgrades and features across our eHealth ecosystem. But from Tupaia to Tamanu, as well as our integrations with mSupply and DHIS2, its not that easy to keep up. We want to be in conversation with you, our user community, to chat about the features we’re most excited about and the integrations you might not know about yet.

That’s why we have started the Tupaia & Tamanu Community Demos – a series of monthly lunchtime demonstrations of features in Tupaia, our data visualisation platform, and Tamanu EMR. We will showcase both new and established features across desktop and mobile and answer technical questions from users wherever time allows.

If you haven’t been following along, let’s get you up to speed.

In March, we explored Tamanu’s COVID-19 testing suite and its functionalities for appointments and scheduling. You can watch the full video below:

In April, we talked about the COVID-19 certificates generated by Tamanu and the digital seals to verify the certificates. Watch the video now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSnybKLy8VY&list=PL0HdmrAKtFNrkmlinIrsMSB6AMFPDOPlX&index=2

In May, we demoed Tamanu’s patient death workflow and improvements to discharge medications, as well as its integration with mSupply data. Check it out:

And this month, we are joined by experts from across our team to chat about Tupaia, and how it can generate reports off map overlays, as well as Tamanu’s functionalities for printing and barcode scanning. Watch the latest demo now:

If you want to catch up in your own time, or share the series with a friend, you can full the view playlist here.

But most importantly, we want to see you at our next Community Demo! Click here to register now and receive all the updates from us.