Chairperson: Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, Mission Director, RCH-NRHM, Department of Health & Family Welfare (H&FW), Govt. of Madhya Pradesh

Co-Chair: Bobby John, President-Global Health Advocates

Session Focus:

• Share mobile innovations in health services delivery.
• The importance of Mobile content in developing the facilities & reach of Health services to the users.
• How mobile content in health services delivery with affordable quality and accessible content and services overcoming time, geographical, economic and social limitations.
• How Mobile can be used as an alternative towards providing health and tele-health services.

Presentations:

• A.S.M Rafiq Ullah, Head of VAS & Digital Services, Grameenphone Ltd, Health SMS Tips, Bangladesh
• Amit Jain, State Program Manager, Sampark Setu, India
• Satya Vir Singh, Sr. Research Scientist, Rural Health Management Information System, India
• Arun Ramanujapuram, CTO, Managing public-health supply chains using mobile phones, India
• Mr. Aman Shrestha, Research leader, Yagiten Private Limited, Amakomaya, Nepal
• Nasim Gholamzadah, Technical Project Manager, Paywast mHealth Call Centers for Maternal Health, Afghanistan
• María Fernandez, Communications Specialist, Advocacy & Communications, ‘Take Poo To The Loo’ India
• Vikas Rajput, Director, NGO Field Tracker, India
• Shashank Batra, Senior IT Associate/Chief Communication Officer, Contact Tracing App, India
• Saurav Gupta, Technical Officer to Executive Director, mSwasthya, India
• Dr.Aparna Hegde, Founder Trustee, mMitra, India.

Summit Bytes:

1. Sampark Setu, India: Earlier, the lack of quick intervention from doctors had cost lives in Madhya Pradesh due to the sparse health facilities and tough terrain. Also any communication happened through patraks and letters which could take time ranging from days to weeks. However with Sampark Setu, and the 77000 sim cards distributed in the state, these communications are possible under seconds by using facebook, Skype or through chatrooms. It uses 12 softwares for monitoring health service delivery. The app serves 30000 women every day for various issues and immunization of the new-born. The impact of the app is large and among many results it has prevented any epidemic situation in the state. The app plans to use SMSs for the ANM workers in the future.

2. Rural Health Management Information System, India:
While the concentration of the workers should be focused to work for the citizens, a lot of time, money and much valuable effort goes towards maintenance of records and manual registers for recognizing places of impact and about places which should be more focused upon. Rural Health Management Information System focuses on prevention of such wastage by timely and efficient uploading of data on a centralized server. This direct uploading into various types of folders leads to better data handling and evaluation; and better scheduling. Also, the workers can access their performance. The web and mobile application covers 7.2 lakh people in Kerala.

3. ‘Take Poo To The Loo’ India: While 594 million people of India which is roughly half of the country’s population do not ‘Take poo to the loo’, the other half of the country does not even care about it. India hosts the highest number of stunted people. Many such problems have arisen in the country as we have turned a blind eye towards the problem. The campaign aims to motivate people to pick mobile and social media and create a buzz that poo not in the loo is not acceptable. Also as making noise is not enough; the part where we can take action is by taking pledge given on the app. Also, on finding poo not in its designated place, one can go on the GPS option of the app and apply a poo sign on the particular spot, motivating the municipality to take action against open defecation and cleansing.
With already growing affiliations to the campaign hosted by UNICEF, the app is also taking steps to now post locations of loo in various localities.

4. Logistimo: Managing public-health supply chains using mobile phones, India: In a lot of places in India, the health care is marred by general inventory and workhouse related problem of drugs, supplies and vaccinations like stock-outs expiry of stocks etc. leading to poor quality of service. Logistimo aims to provide all kinds on information related to levels of stocks of various types on cloud storage servers. The data also tells the level of stocks at various places, the places which need to be replenished, and the new drugs available; and thus helps in the optimal decision making. It also enhances pharmacist’s and manager’s control over people working for them and to increase capacity wherever required.
After implication of this app, availability of the drugs and medicines has increased drastically as is suggested by the data. With the optimization of the entire data, accurate actions are being taken towards arising problems.

5. Amakomaya, Nepal: With 83% of its entire population being rural, Nepal ranks 157th in Human Development Index. The low ranks also owes to the high under-5 child mortality rate, high rate of deaths of diseases etc. However the high use of phones which is upto 75% of the population, the idea of Amakomaya materializes. With its entire interface in Nepali, it consists of all the information of pregnant woman comprising of their names, ages, stage of the child, last hospital visit and status of requisite immunization and vaccination etc. Thus having all their requisite data, time to time information in form of notification and SMSs is provided to them. Also the local ANMs are equipped with mobiles and can input and correct data. Amakomaya is looking forward to partnership with various NGOs and thus connect rural and urban Nepal.

6. Paywast mHealth Call Centers for Maternal Health, Afghanistan: Afghanistan faces an excess of 71 deaths per 1000 newborn babies, which is one of the highest in the world. In the rural areas, the number is even higher. This problem is mostly due to unsafe births at home and thus inadequate health care and information. Paywast is a call centre service based in Kabul where doctors and their advices can be accessed by simple calls. While for low severity cases, the call centre can provide instructions and suggestions concerning safe birth, for high severity cases, call centre will provide with taxi service so that the patient can be brought to the hospital under proper medical services and facilities. The service has been recognized by WHO and will expand by addition of a new call centre.

7. NGO Field Tracker, India: For all the NGOs who are in the field of providing health services to the common man, how does it measure the impact it has made? The obvious challenge is the fact that often the population under observation is large and manual record keeping leads into poor functionality, which in the business of saving lives means loss of lives.
NGO tracker provides a simple solution of keeping records digitally. The GPS location tagging provides possibility of capturing field visits and do village/ district/ state wise mapping. The application works offline as well and the data uploads as and when connectivity is restored. Thus while the app provides real time data, it also helps in monitoring partners and can also be used for SHG meetings.

8. mSwasthya, India: mSwasthya, which is a bundle of many apps, provides real time consultation by providing context awareness on various health issues. The apps aim at reducing the visits to hospitals by providing appropriate SMSs and emails related with self-health care. The messages are complete with precautions, suggestions and information above basic health care or about impending dangers.
The apps also help build a data base as and when anyone enters particular information from some place. This data helps the health services to prevent epidemic before they spread by acting quickly on that same place and around. The SMS gateway which the app is using is designed by C-DAC and provides additional information like availability of doctors, child immunization alerts etc.

9. Contact Tracing App, India: India faces 8 million new cases of TB every year. Out of this 8, 3 million are missing cases which go undetected and uncured or cured at a much later stage. Every such patient can spread the disease to 12 more people who come in contact with him/her and thus the number keeps climbing. Therefore, prevalence of TB is maximum in India shows that this cycle is prevailing in India. Thus early detection is the only cure to the problem.
Contact tracing allows people to report themselves or their near ones, if they appear to be having any symptoms suggesting TB. Workers will be sent on site to check on the reported person and if the person is found to be suffering from TB, while proper care is provided to the patient, now the people in his/her contact are checked for the symptoms. The workers finding patients are rewarded financially and the data is checked and verified by the government. The data when crossed with the locations by GPS shows TB hotspots on the map. Started in India since 1.5 months, the application has already helped in 123 detections.

10. mMitra, India: In India, where the food provided by Government to pregnant women is considered unfit for consumption and used as cattle feed simply because of lack of information, the first step should be to impart information through logical and possible mediums. As the women from the poorest section of the society neither can use apps nor can read SMSs, mMitra provides information on pre-decided time of the day and week as per the subject through voice calls.
With the information of the pregnant women already taken and the current status of the mother and the baby known, appropriate information and notifications are provided week by week. 2000 women who have enrolled with the service get timely instructions and it is ensured that the mother gets the instruction.