Challenge
Community health workers walk door-to-door for hours each day, reminding mothers about upcoming vaccination programs. Despite this hard work, millions of children never complete their basic vaccinations. When the Khushi Baby team visited Northern India, they found three major systemic problems - - Community health workers don't have a good way of knowing which vaccines to bring with them to immunization camps thus making it difficult to meet local healthcare needs. - Many mothers don’t understand the importance of vaccines and choose not to take their children to immunization clinics. - NGOs cannot tell which babies are missing their vaccines. Data is collected in giant paper logbooks, which contain thousands of names. They are often outdated and hard to search. Khushi Baby has built a platform that brings mhealth, wearable NFC and cloud computing together to monitor and motivate the health care of mothers and children to the last mile.
Solution
We collaborated with the Khushi Baby team on the technology front to build a novel mobile app (KB or Khushi Baby app) for community health workers that interfaces with a digital necklace worn by patients via Near Field Communication or NFC. All the data is stored on a tiny NFC chip (worn in the form of a pendant) that is synced to the cloud and displayed on an analytics dashboard, where insights can be acted upon by health officials. Intelligent Data Collection Novel solution to scan, update and sync data using a smartphone app and NFC pendant that always stays with the patient. Wearable NFC Tech The solution makes smart use of an NFC chip, worn as a pendant, to read and write data from a companion mobile app. Cloud Dashboard Robust cloud-based dashboard holds all the key information that is updated in real-time and is used by healthcare officials for reporting and analytics. Offline Support Medical staff can use a smartphone or tablet to access patient records and update them without Internet access. Dialect-Specific Call Reminders The system automatically calls mothers in their local language for immunization reminders and educational updates. Biometric Verification A biometric system is used to verify the mother’s identity either online or offline.
Results
The Khushi Baby system has been used to successfully track over 2000+ mothers & children across 375 Villages till date. There has been a 12% increase in full immunization of infants, 4% decrease in malnutrition rates of infants and 20% improvement in data consistency and data completeness. Awards & Recognition The Khushi Baby team has been recognized several terms for their innovative use of mobile technology to improve healthcare services in rural areas: - Johnson & Johnson GenH Challenge First Prize (2017) - NFC Forum: Best Mobile App 2017 - Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare and Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 Healthcare and Life Sciences (2016) - UNICEF Wearables for Good Challenge Winner (2015) - 3ie: Innovations for Increasing Immunization Grantee (2015) - Future Health Systems Young Researcher Grantee (2015)
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