How We Made a Health App that Works in India ' s Most Remote Areas

September 14, 2017Designing an app is easy. Deploying it is the challenge.Over half a century ago, communications guru and intellectual Marshall McLuhan  predicted that electronic interdependence will make the world a global village. But last month, Simon Tisdall ofThe Guardian called out the international media for creating a hierarchy of suffering by focusing on Hurricane Harvey more than on the devastating floods in South Asia and South East Asia.The reason: distance!The distances that marginalize are not just physical. They manifest in governance gaps, (in)justice, cultural atrophy, social dystopia. Nowhere is the tyranny of distance more manifest than in health care delivery.And the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand has the double burden of hilly terrain along with metaphorical distances to bridge.Designing an app is easy. Deploying it is more challenging.This is exactly what mSakhi works to achieve: bridging the tyranny of distance with a digital innovation in the form of an app that empowers India ’s frontline health and nutrition workers.mSakhi is an Android-based app, freely downloadable, and designed for frontline health workers such as accredited social health activists (ASHAs, which also stands for hope) and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs).This app doubles as a register that combines the multiple registers these workers have to fill and maintain, and as a job aid cum trainer. It is a registration tool for pregnant and lactating mothers and their children, helps ...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: news