Qualcomm launches Android-based rural health project in UP

Under the initiative, the field workers known as ASHAs and auxiliary nurse midwives have been provided with about 180 net-enabled smartphones/tablets

Global 3G and next-generation mobile technologies major Qualcomm today announced its collaboration on a 3G mobile technology project that employs Android smartphones/tablets to help frontline health workers in India improve maternal, neonatal and child health.

Qualcomm has collaborated with IntraHealth International, State Innovations in Family Planning Services Project Agency (SIFPSA) and National Health Mission of the Uttar Pradesh government in this pilot project launched in Jhansi district.

Under the initiative, the field workers known as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) have been provided with about 180 net-enabled smartphones/tablets in Baragaon block of Jhansi.

Home visits by ASHAs are acknowledged as a key measure to lower infant and maternal mortality rates and achieve a single digit neonatal mortality rate by 2030.

However, despite pre-service and in-service training, ASHAs continue to grapple with inadequate expert knowledge and skills, Qualcomm vice president (government affairs India & South Asia) Parag Kar said here.

To help overcome these challenges, Qualcomm Incorporated through Qualcomm Wireless Reach initiative in consort with its partners collaborated to expand the existing mSakhi application and establish a mHealth lab in the Baragaon block.

The mHealth lab serves as a learning site to design, test and implement the expanded version of mSakhi application.

mSakhi is an interactive audio and video guided Android app that helps ASHAs to conduct routine activities more effectively across the continuum of maternal, newborn and child health care, and provide information on family planning.

In addition, the newly designed web- and mobile-based dashboards help ANMs provide better guidance to ASHAs. These dashboards also enable the health administration, at both the block and district levels, to monitor the work of ASHAs and ANMs in real-time.

"We are also working towards making this model self-sustaining, so that it could be replicated at other such places," Kar added.