IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 36

with scalability and computational
problems [9].

mHEALTH-PHC for RCH

Fig. 3. Doctor's prescription using
E-pen in local language (Marathi).

mHEALTH-PHC has established
a much needed link between the
village social health activist, the
sub-center midwife, the Center
Medical Officer, and the expert
at a rural or city hospital. Data
and information in digital form
can now be transferred easily
across the Sub-center and Center, avoiding the delay caused by
manual operations. Health workers are trained to use mHEALTHPHC which manages the health
data. This helps capacity building of health workers. Although
few doctors prefer to go in rural
areas, mHEALTH-PHC helps
rural patients to get the advice
from city experts, as the medical history of the patient along
with the current query is readily
available to the doctor. Availability of contact numbers for private and public vehicles through
mHEALTH-PHC, will help to
solve transport problems to some
extent. As stated earlier, although
mobile phones are the most useful device in the hands of village health worker, use of mobile
phone and Internet technologies
have their own challenges like
database design, privacy of data,
human computer interface along,
36

The mHEALTH-PHC platform
primarily digitizes the "Mother
and Child Health Card" that is
used conventionally in the RCH
program. The midwife registers a
pregnant woman with the help of
client software on a mobile phone.
A unique identity number is given
to the mother as in the conventional registers called "R-15." The
newborn baby, when registered is
allocated a unique identity number
as is already given in the conventional "R-16" register. The identity
numbers of both mother and child
are linked in the system for better future reference. The platform,
therefore, connects two major users
of the health system; the beneficiary (that is, the pregnant woman)
and the doctor, via the midwife.
Hence, for this application of the
mHEALTH-PHC tool there are
two major components; a midwife
interface and a doctor's interface.
The midwife interface is on the
mobile phone using a local language. This application captures the
entire pregnancy lifecycle and postdelivery details. Based on the data,
it automatically builds the history of
the mother beneficiary in the system. This software has the following functionalities: authentication,
new patient registration, pre-delivery checkup module, pre-delivery
trimester checkup module, postdelivery update, update the history
of registered patient, and making a
health query. fig. 4 shows the mobile
screen shots in local language.
The doctor's interface, called
"Doctor's Console," is accessed
on computer as the Center infrastructure includes the facility of
personal computer and Internet
connection. fig. 5 shows the screen
shot of the Doctor's Console. The
beneficiary's personal profile as
well as medical history is available
to the doctor in the same format as
is currently available in the RCH

program. The Doctor's Console
has the following functionalities:
authentication, "check queries,"
"give advice," and "send alerts."
Using the "give advice" module,
the doctor can advise by analyzing
the beneficiary's profile, medical
history, and test reports. The doctor
can use text or voice for advising
and use an E-pen for prescribing.
To communicate epidemic alerts
or good practice to the larger community, the doctors can broadcast
the message or send an alert through
the "Alerts" module. A doctor can
select a specific area or group to
send the alerts, which can be in local
languages. Health workers can also
listen to various posts done by doctors to get rich information about
health related instances in a particular area and plan accordingly.

mHEALTH-PHC: Field
Experience
for the patient, the first encounter
is with the social health activist.
for mHEALTH-PHC also, the first
encounter is with the social health
activist or midwife. We found both of
them willing to use the software and
the feedback is encouraging. Using
mHEALTH-PHC, the midwife
could view the previous data records
of the pregnant women. This information helped her to frame accurate
questions while talking to a specific pregnant woman on her visit.
This made her job more efficient by
reducing the interaction time.
Prior to the implementation of
mHEALTH-PHC, the midwife
could not establish connection to
the Center doctor, even in case of
emergencies, if the doctor was busy
or if the doctor was out of coverage
area of the signal. The asynchronous query capability provided by
mHEALTH-PHC, and provision
of marking the query as "urgent",
made the midwife more comfortable
and effective. With mHEALTHPHC, the midwife gets the doctor's
response as soon as the doctor is
free and attends to her query. During the pilot, Midwivess made more

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

fALL 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013