MediCapt Toolkit Consultant At Physicians for Human Rights

Location: Remote, Worldwide

Classification: This is a temporary consultancy through November 2021, with the possibility of extension.

Organization Description

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a preeminent international advocacy and research organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. For more than 30 years, PHR has mobilized a community of clinicians and human rights professionals to advance human rights, public health, and social justice across the globe. In this time, it has become a trailblazer in its field, leading landmark investigations into crimes against humanity, and earning a 1997 Nobel Prize for its investigation of the health impact of land mines in Cambodia. PHR has also exposed the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Iraq, exhumed mass graves in Bosnia and Rwanda for international tribunals and provided evidence for criminal investigations into torture and extrajudicial executions.

Today, PHR is on the front lines of the most pressing human rights crises of our time, from the coup in Myanmar, to U.S. police violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The last year has only highlighted the critical importance of using science-based approaches to safeguard human rights, most particularly those of women and children, immigrants, refugees, detainees, and other populations at risk.

Recent highlights of PHR’s work include:

• Advocating for an Evidence-based Response to the Pandemic: Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, PHR has sounded the alarm over the grave risks posed by COVID-19 to populations in areas where health systems are underdeveloped, decimated by armed conflict, or virtually nonexistent. PHR is elevating the voices of local health providers about the extreme dangers of COVID-19 to their communities and supporting partners around the world in advocating for a concerted, collaborative, science- and rights- based worldwide response.
• Documenting Police Violence: Following President Trump’s July 26, 2020 order to deploy federal agents to protest sites around the country, PHR sent an expert team to Portland, Oregon to investigate reports of the extreme force police and federal agents were using against protestors and first responders.
• Highlighting Violence Against the Rohingya: PHR has produced numerous reports documenting serious human rights violations against the Rohingya people of Myanmar. Its latest research sheds new light on the patterns of extreme injuries, specifically related to sexual violence, that survivors suffered through rape, gang rape, mutilation, forced witnessing of sexual assault, and other forms of sexual violence.

PHR’s vital work is sustained by a dynamic and deeply committed team of approximately 45 based in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also supported by a prominent Board and an annual operating budget of nearly $8-9M.

Role Description

In 2011, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) launched its Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones to confront impunity for widespread sexual violence – used as both a weapon of war and a common crime. Rare cases that made it to court often failed because of insufficient evidence to support survivors’ allegations. In that context, PHR saw medical professionals as powerful change agents and created an initiative to enhance collaboration between medical and legal professionals to collect, document, and analyze forensic evidence to hold perpetrators accountable, and to improve medical care and access to justice for survivors. PHR has been working with doctors, nurses, trauma counsellors, police officers, lawyers, and judges in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to develop comprehensive, standardized methods for collecting forensic evidence of sexual violence to increase the likelihood of effective and successful investigations and prosecutions of these crimes.

But health facilities and police stations using paper-based forms often lack proper storage for secure preservation of evidence or officials encounter difficulties traveling distances to transmit or retrieve evidence due to poor roads or lack of access to vehicles, among other complicating factors.

To address these challenges and to leverage mobile phone penetration even in the most resource-constrained environments, PHR has been developing a high-tech solution called MediCapt, a mobile application to help clinicians document forensic evidence of sexual violence during a patient encounter. This app converts a standardized medical intake form to a digital platform and combines it with a secure mobile camera to facilitate forensic photography. Clinicians can use the app to compile evidence, photograph survivors’ injuries, and securely transmit the data to police, lawyers, and judges involved in prosecuting these crimes. Digitizing these forms minimizes the chances of loss, tampering, or theft of medical evidence, while preserving chain of custody.

Our partners in the DRC and Kenya see MediCapt as a solution for yielding stronger evidence, preserving chain of custody, and improving data security and privacy. Among its key features, MediCapt includes sophisticated encryption, cloud data storage, high fidelity to chain of custody standards, and tamper-proof metadata. Significantly, the Android-based app is designed to securely collect data in conflict zones, as well as remote locations where internet connectivity and/or wireless data transmission is limited. PHR has been collaborating with clinicians in the DRC and Kenya to improve MediCapt’s features (offline printing, secure photo capture capacity, and back-end review for quality improvement and assurance). We have also been working with health care facilities to integrate the app into clinical workflows and co-developed implementation protocols. We went “live” with patients in Naivasha, Kenya in 2018 and we will soon pilot with patients for the first time in the DRC.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is seeking a technological consultant to support MediCapt in the DRC. The consultant will serve as the technological expert for MediCapt in the DRC and support project management, working in close coordination with PHR staff, hospital administrators, end users, the MediCapt technological consultant in Kenya, and other partners.

Reports to: Director, Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones

Role Description:

MediCapt is an award-winning application developed by PHR that enables clinicians to document medical evidence of sexual violence cases digitally, capture forensic photographs, and store them securely. Clinician end users are currently using MediCapt with sexual violence survivors in Kenya and soon in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

PHR is developing and implementing a scaling strategy to grow the MediCapt project in partnership with international organizations, humanitarian organizations, and governments. A key piece of the scaling strategy is the MediCapt Toolkit, which is the suite of materials needed to implement the project. The MediCapt Toolkit includes:

• The MediCapt user manual
• Training documents (for MediCapt training and forensic photography training)
• This will include final versions of both PowerPoint slides for these trainings and a Facilitators Guide outlining the training modules
• M&E tools and plan
• Troubleshooting documents
• Institutional policies and procedures
• Briefs and resources
• Fact sheets
• Tech documentation (The documentation of this work will be led by the MediCapt Technical Project Manager and the Tech Advisory Board as a separate but related project)

The objective of the MediCapt Toolkit is to have final versions of all materials needed to implement the MediCapt project. As part of the MediCapt scaling strategy, PHR anticipates that other organizations will implement the project and the Toolkit will be the one-stop shop for all MediCapt materials. We will publish the MediCapt Toolkit on the PHR website in November 2021.

The MediCapt Toolkit will be published on the PHR website in English and French later this year to accompany the open-source code of the application.

We are looking for a consultant to lead the refinement and finalization of the MediCapt Toolkit.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as lead on the MediCapt Toolkit project.
• Conduct an assessment of the current materials, identify gaps and areas for improvement, and develop a plan for completing the project.
• This will also include researching other organizations’ project toolkits to learn and improve on the current materials.
• PHR has already conducted review of our current materials and a spreadsheet with the status of each document
• Draft needed materials and liaise with PHR experts to manage development of technical materials.
• Finalize the MediCapt Toolkit and ensure the materials are ready for publication.
• Lead meetings with PHR staff and consultants to coordinate the project and participate in regular calls with the PHR team.
• Complete four key deliverables:

Deliverable and Estimated days

1. Landscape assessment of current materials – 7
2. Work plan for project (and revisions of plan if needed from PHR input) – 2
3. Draft MediCapt Toolkit – 12
4. Final MediCapt Toolkit, including feedback from PHR team – 8

Qualifications and Skills

• Experience in developing tools, materials, programming, education, or research to address sexual and gender-based violence;
• Ability to adjust and create tools;Physicians for Human Rights
• Pro-activity and ability to work independently
• Excellent project manager, flexible and skilled in executing multiple tasks, managing work plans and budgets, and working with diverse groups of stakeholders across multiple global teams;
• Superb oral and written communication skills in English;
• Experience working on tech-related global health, justice, or human rights projects
• Excellent cross-cultural communication skills;
• Ability to produce clear written products in English with minimal editing, French-language skill a plus.

More information about Physicians for Human Rights can be found at www.phr.org.