Business cases

CICM Magacascar: Structuring data to strengthen the fight against infectious diseases in Madagascar

CICM leverages Claris FileMaker to centralize and secure research data, improve analysis, and support the fight against infectious diseases in Madagascar.

Cathy

3 February 2026 • 3 min

Built in 2010 on the Antananarivo University campus in Madagascar, Centre d’Infectiologie Charles Mérieux (CICM) Madagascar is a research and training center that represents a unique collaboration between Madagascar’s Ministry of Public Health, the University of Antananarivo, and the Fondation Mérieux—a Lyon-based family foundation dedicated to fighting infectious diseases worldwide.

While constructed and supported by the Fondation Mérieux, the center operates with financial autonomy to fulfill its core mission: combating infectious diseases through scientific research, technology transfer, and training the next generation of African scientists.

Discover the latest clinical and research news on the CICM Madagascar Facebook page.

A major challenge: securing and leveraging dispersed data

Among all their activities, the CICM runs a program focusing on leprosy, a disease still endemic in Madagascar. This program, with its clinical and research components, generates a wealth of valuable information: clinical and biological results, research protocols, and complex imaging datasets.

The scale of this effort is substantial:

• Over 450 patients are currently in the biological bank—a significant figure for a neglected tropical disease.
• Samples collected from 18 healthcare centers across Madagascar, reflecting wide geographic coverage
• 7.5% of samples come from children under 15, a critical indicator that the epidemic is still actively spreading in the country.

Yet, despite this rich scientific capital, a major obstacle persists: data fragmentation. This challenge manifests in several ways:

• Security risks: Paper records are at risk of loss or damage, while Excel files are prone to irreversible errors.
• Limited accessibility: Data scattered across multiple locations make comprehensive analysis difficult.
• Inefficient workflows: Researchers struggle to track trends over time or cross-reference datasets.
• Missed insights: The lack of easy querying and analysis makes it challenging to consolidate information from different projects.

We are still working with scattered files where a single error can have consequences on our deliverables.

explains one of the center’s researchers

These obstacles have led CICM to seek a sustainable, custom solution.

The objective is not to increase productivity or testing volume, but rather to centralize, secure, and better exploit existing data, ensuring long-term integrity and enabling meaningful scientific analysis.

Designing the right solution: flexible, secure, and research-oriented

CICM assessed several data management options, including Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platforms widely used in clinical trials. While effective for predefined studies, these systems often lack flexibility, require databases to be fixed in advance, and become increasingly costly as data volumes grow. These constraints make EDC platforms poorly adapted to a research environment that is exploratory, evolving, and multidisciplinary.

Other alternatives, such as Microsoft Access, were also considered but set aside due to limited internal expertise, making them a risky choice for such a critical system.

CICM therefore chose to build on a platform it already knew and trusted: Claris FileMaker. The center had already developed a FileMaker-based solution for routine HIV viral load monitoring, which remains in active use today.

While this existing solution remains effective for a specific and well-defined clinical workflow, it was not designed to support the growing diversity of research questions, data types, and diagnostic activities undertaken by the center.

Claris FileMaker combines the scalability and flexibility that the alternatives were lacking, allowing databases to evolve over time without being locked into a fixed structure, while offering a user-friendly interface tailored to day-to-day laboratory workflows.

This proven foundation naturally led CICM to develop a new FileMaker-based solution, specifically designed to address its expanding needs, particularly in leprosy diagnostics and related research.

The solution currently under development is designed to support both clinical and research workflows.

 It addresses meet four critical needs:

• Centralize data from diverse sources, including numerical data, images, and large datasets.
• Ensure security and integrity and prevent errors.
• Enable advanced analysis, allowing researchers to query data, track trends, and generate insights efficiently and on demand.
• Scientific heritage by preserving a record of the work done and the results obtained for future generations of students.

Future impact: empowering research and collaboration

Once fully implemented in a few months, the FileMaker is expected to significantly improve how CICM manages and exploits its data—allowing researchers to focus on research rather than data management.

The solution will strengthen the center’s research capacity, improve data analysis, and support evidence-based decision-making in the fight against infectious diseases.

For a center dedicated to training the next generation of African scientists and improving diagnostic tools for diseases, this infrastructure is essential.

Every sample analyzed today is a building block for a future of accurate, accessible, and actionable intelligence in the fight against infectious diseases in Madagascar.

More than just a database, this new infrastructure will provide CICM with the means to achieve its ambition: placing digital precision at the heart of research and the fight against leprosy and infectious diseases in Madagascar.