Deploying ADVISER: Impact and Lessons from Using Artificial Intelligence for Child Vaccination Uptake in Nigeria

Abstract

More than 5 million children under five years die from largely preventable or treatable medical conditions every year, with an overwhelmingly large proportion of deaths occurring in underdeveloped countries with low vaccination uptake. One of the United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDG 3) aims to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under five years of age. We focus on Nigeria, where the rate of infant mortality is appalling. In particular, low vaccination uptake in Nigeria is a major driver of more than 2,000 daily deaths of children under the age of five years. In this paper, we describe our collaboration with government partners in Nigeria to deploy ADVISER: AI-Driven Vaccination Intervention Optimiser. The framework, based on an integer linear program that seeks to maximize the cumulative probability of successful vaccination, is the first successful deployment of an AI-enabled toolchain for optimizing the allocation of health interventions in Nigeria. In this paper, we provide a background of the ADVISER framework and present results, lessons, and success stories of deploying ADVISER to more than 13,000 families in the state of Oyo, Nigeria.