Mr Makhasi, Mvuyo

Mvuyo Makhasi studied Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Witwatersrand and started his career as a technical specialist in the Visa payments network for a private bank. He always had a passion for using technology and innovation to solve real world challenges and was fortunate to be appointed as a Master’s Fellow at the Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis, where he ran his first study – a wearable proximity sensor pilot for quantifying contact patterns between individuals in households in South Africa (Mpumalanga and North West).
Makhasi fell in love with public health research instantly and developed a strong interest in public health and epidemiology. He obtained a master’s degree from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, where he used quantitative methods to analyse contact patterns towards understanding transmission dynamics of respiratory diseases. He is also interested in developing health systems that improve data collection and analysis of respiratory disease surveillance in South Africa.
Makhasi’s primary research focus is establishing a crowdsourced health platform for the syndromic surveillance of acute respiratory infections (ARI). This involves developing a digital participatory surveillance platform, where members of the community in South Africa can self-report symptoms of ARI, using an online survey. The goal is to address some of the limitations of respiratory disease surveillance and describe the epidemiology of non-medically attended cases of ARI. In addition to this, he is working on assessing the feasibility of linking this platform to laboratory confirmation of self-reported suspected cases through home-based testing. He would like to learn more and employ the application of Big Data and Data Science approaches to respiratory disease epidemiology.