mSakhi Is Changing Everything for This Community Health Worker and Her Clients in Rural India

June 25, 2018Digital health  empowers Lalita to provide better antenatal care—and to keep up with her children.Lalita Chauhan starts her day early to the sound of an alarm from her phone. A couple of years ago, she could not have imagined starting her day in such a high-tech way, much less owning a smartphone.As an ASHA (or accredited social health activist) in rural India, Lalita and other community health workers are benefitting from the country ’s Digital India initiative, whereby the national government is transitioning paper-based services to digital platforms to make public services more accessible to communities. Her new smartphone is a result of this, and her confidence in using it comes from technology training fromIntraHealth International.IntraHealth is helping the state of Uttarakhand leverage the national campaign to improve primary health care at the facility and household levels, in part through itsmSakhi digital application for Android smartphones.  Now Lalita can pull up  real-time status reports for any client, any time on her phone.To help ASHAs transition from paper records to digital, IntraHealth taught Lalita and her colleagues how to use their smartphones for data collection, skills building, and health promotion. The training also introduces them to new ways to use technology in their everyday lives, such as setting up calendar alerts and wake-up or reminder alarms, as well as communicating with family members and colleagues.“Hum to abhi wh...

Source: IntraHealth International - June 25, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: mnathe Source Type: news