Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Infect Dis Poverty. 2020 Oct 7;9(1):138. doi: 10.1186/s40249-020-00751-x.
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.
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.
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.
We demonstrate that crowdsourcing is a participatory method, that is able to identify bottom-up or grassroots SI initiatives developed by non-traditional actors.
众包是一种分布式的问题解决和生产机制，利用非专业个人和网络社区的集体智慧来实现特定目标。社会创新（SI）计划旨在以可持续的方式应对健康挑战，有可能加强卫生系统。它们是由来自不同背景和学科的行为者开发的。本文介绍了将众包作为一种研究方法来探索健康领域的 SI 计划。
本研究探讨了众包作为一种方法，以确定在非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲实施的 SI 计划。虽然众包已经在高收入国家得到应用，但在中低收入国家（LMIC）中，关于其应用、益处和挑战的知识有限。从 2014 年到 2018 年，在全球、区域和国家各级进行了六次众包竞赛。
共确定了 305 个合格项目；其中有 38 个卫生领域的 SI 计划。我们描述了执行 SI 众包竞赛的过程、竞赛的结果以及在 LMIC 中使用这种机制的挑战和机遇。
我们证明了众包是一种参与式方法，能够识别由非传统行为者开发的自下而上或基层的 SI 计划。
