MotherCare

234 out of 1,00,000 children in rural India lose their mother
just after birth. In rural infrastructure, current healthcare solutions
make it more troublesome for a woman to access complete pregnancy care and treatment during unprotected sex or missed
menstrual period. MotherCare is developing an advanced wearable for
systematic cardio-respiratory parameter monitoring and bio-marker
measurement along with online doctor’s consultation during pregnancy
phase (from pregnancy detection to six months after pregnancy), to
tackle high-risk pregnancy and provide early intervention to
impact the developmental outcomes. Results are instant and the device is
small, portable in nature. We are also trying to cover up the
setback of pregnancy care with introduction of “MotherCare weekly kit”,
that covers nutritional (vitamins, minerals) and livelihood care from
pre-natal to post-natal stage. On scaling globally, our proposed
technology enabled solution can reduce both MMR and financial burden due to high risk pregnancies.

In India, every 20 minutes a pregnant woman dies due to pregnancy related complications like CVD, hypertension, hemorrhage etc. WHO-UNICEF carried out a research on maternal morbidity in 35 countries where India ranked the top, with 17.1% due to pregnancy related death. Pregnancy related complications increase the risk of maternal, infant death as well as contain adverse outcomes such as miscarriage, stillbirth, and premature birth.  Annually in India, 0.5M babies are still born and 3.5M are premature leading to deaths and long-term developmental problems. Nearly, 90% of these deaths occur in rural, tribal and resource-limited infrastructure, who suffers the most due to denial in equitable access to services, most of them can be prevented. Lack of gynecologists, medical tests, diagnostic facilities, healthcare centers further limits the intervention in rural areas. Current complete prenatal coverage is only 21%, mostly due to the lack of effective tools to monitor risks by front-line workers. Post COVID-19's collateral damage increase infant death and MMR directly as well as indirectly. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health predicted an 8% to 38% increase in maternal deaths over next 6 months as well as an additional 300k to 1.2M children deaths under 5.                                                                                                                                      

MotherCare initiative is based on "doorstep care". We are developing an all in one advanced wearable for cardio-respiratory parameter monitoring and bio-markers measurement along with online doctor consultation that in case introduces a unique approach towards pregnancy detection and care. Cardiorespiratory module can detect Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate (MMSB principle), ECG, hemoglobin concentration. Concentration Based module based on voltammetry based potentiostat used as Point-Of-Care diagnostics device in resource-setting environment. It measures glucose, cholesterol, lactate concentration from pregnant woman's sweat.  System is adaptive, based on the test scenario. Pregnancy is detected by HCG from pregnant woman's urine. Hence, wireless detector (URINE KIT) needs to be a detachable unit. After use and proper sanitation, it can be refitted into the wearable module. To bridge the gap between patients and doctors, we are developing  'mothercare app'. The app enables encrypted patient's EHR sharing. We are incorporating template-based SMS system for EHR sharing due to unavailability of proper internet connectivity throughout INDIA. An assistive care is provided by distributing ‘MotherCare Weekly kit’ consisting of necessities (food supplement, iron and folic acid supplements) required for one week during pregnancy period.

MotherCare targets the problem of poor healthcare access, diagnosis and monitoring pregnancy care in remote areas. Due to late pregnancy detection and absence of proper livelihood care, there is a mammoth increase in high-risk pregnancies. 63% of pregnant woman in rural India works until the day of delivery so they tend to ignore their health, check-ups and medicines related to high risk pregnancies. Typically, mothers have to travel 20 km to reach a specialist. We surveyed about 4 villages in the rural West Bengal, India. The question was “have you checked your pregnancy with pregnancy detection kit?” The answer in 70% case was “No”. They confirmed their pregnancy by external body parameters' observation which often lead to late pregnancy detection. We found that cost, time constraints, lack of diagnostic facilities and gynecologists, and absence of healthcare centers created a scope for introduction of an all in one wearable with online doctor consultation. 60% of mortality can be prevented with proper care. Designed wearable along with total care feature is a one stop solution for all of their pregnancy related needs. Development of community women health-workers creates a single touch point for pregnancies.                   

This challenge speaks about maternal and new born health. Majority of the pregnancy related deaths occur in low-income countries and in resource limited settings. Our proposed all-in-one wearable for cardiorespiratory and bio-marker detector can give access to high quality affordable care for pregnant women. It also solves the problem of carrying multiple devices for check-ups and introduces Point-Of-Care diagnostics. Health community feature in our app provides medical information along with meditation activities, mental exercises, conscious breathing lessons, nutritional advice, and physical activity related guideline. “Mothercare kit” provides livelihood care during pregnancy to improve health of would be moms.   

We have competitors like CareNx, Progyny, Babyscripts etc.

Technical advantage - We are using better measurement techniques for body vitals originated from founders’ research work (work accepted in EMBC 2020 conference & few papers are under review in IECON 2020 conference). Competitors’ solutions are mostly relying on Software/App based analysis and hardware results are taken from third party source.  Our solution is integrated in nature.

Complete coverage - We are working on a greater number of meaningful health parameters in comparison to a normal wearable based monitoring. During design iteration, we found that energy use is an important issue. Traditional PPG (photoplethysmogram) based wearable drains energy a lot and wearables are not up to the mark for meaningful health decisions. Proper EHR generation requires training. We use magnetoplethysmograph technique which has significant advantage over PPG (Sarkar et. al, EMBC). In bio marker measurement, we integrated HCG based pregnancy detection kit and traditional glucose, cholesterol, lactate measuring kit into a single platform by changing the screen printed electrode.

Easy to use app - Developed small size MotherCare app can work on low-end hardware. Mothercare focuses on reaching mother, providing doorstep screening, timely and early identifying risks/complications , notifications to health-workers and gynecologists for immediate interventions. Mothercare facilitates register, track based preventive care model to create an impact.

Assistive care :- Proper food supplements are necessary during pregnancy. We introduced food supplement sachet pack consisting fruits, oil, soap, vitamin, iron tables etc. for holistic growth of pregnant woman and child.

Mothercare device has the appearance of a wearable, but has an increased dimension compared to existing wearable devices. The device comprises of a cardiorespiratory module and a wireless electrochemical detector. Cardiorespiratory module (developed from GMR sensor) can detect Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, haemoglobin concentration. Normally used PPG based wrist watch sensors like 'Fitbit' has high power consumption and error probability (except Apple watch 4), often fails to provide result during misalignment of sensor. GMR sensor based MPG (magnetoplethysmograph) is a perfect solution in this respect with comparatively less power requirement. Health workers have to travel a lot so battery usage, weight of device is an important issue. We reduced the sleep mode power consumption of wearable in microwatt level. MPG technique works even on misalignment of the wearable. ECG is detected from wrist-based two electrode system. Based on health data, we are trying to provide fitness and health analytics. Wireless electrochemical detector based on screen printed electrode is used for point-of-care diagnostics in resource limited environment. We are integrating electrochemical lactate, glucose, cholesterol biosensor by using disposable screen-printed electrode to measure their concentration in pregnant woman sweat.  System is adaptive based on the test scenario by changing the electrode strip. In pregnancy woman, there is a requirement to detect some additional biomarker from urine. So, HCG based detector for pregnancy detection is developed as a detachable unit. After use and proper sanitization, it can be refitted into the wearable module.

Corresponding academic paper links for technology.

• Cardio-respitory paper :- (https://drive.google.com/file/...) – accepted in EMBC 2020
• Electrochemical detector paper :- (https://drive.google.com/file/...) submitted in IECON 2020

• All in one wearable paper :- (https://drive.google.com/file/...)submitted in IECON 2020
• Wearble for pregnant woman :- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...
• Security of EHR based data - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ab...

Problems: - MotherCare lays its direct emphasis on the problem of poor healthcare access, diagnosis and monitoring pregnancy care in resource-limited setting, which leads to high-risk pregnancies and ultimately proves fatal to both mother and the child.

Activities: -

• Deployment of community health workers (saheli) as frontline workers who will act as the last mile of connect between our healthcare ecosystem and the target population.
• Development of an all in one advanced wearable using cardiorespiratory parameters monitoring and bio-markers detection.
• Development of “MotherCare” mobile app that helps us to join our patient population to our network of doctors, paediatricians and also to maintain a database of registered cases.
• Production, supply and delivery of our “MotherCare weekly kit” for prenatal, intranatal and postnatal care.

Outputs: -

• Routine monitoring of health of mother and the baby from 3-months after pregnancy detection to 6-months after pregnancy, accounts for a total of 13 month.
• Increased knowledge about maternal complications and new-born danger signs as well as develop a changed attitude towards care seeking.
• Decrease of the old taboos and cultural believes existing in the society.

Short-Term Outcome: -

• Availability of guidelines and strategies to implement our solution more successfully in next stage of development.
• Reduction of financial burden during pregnancy.

Medium Term Outcome: -

• Reduction of MMR within a village cluster.
• Improved financial condition of our “Saheli” workers.

Long-Term Outcome: -

• Early detection and management of pregnancy complications.
• Ability to back the existing healthcare ecosystem in case of uncertain natural calamity.
• Improved nutrition and health status of pregnant women and new-born.
• A platform for sharing maternal experiences under Mothercare app.

Desired Impact: -

• Improved maternal Health: Reduction in maternal mortality and morbidity rates.
• Improved new-born Health: Reduced perinatal and neonatal mortality.

Assumptions: -

• Availability of community healthcare workers is not a problem in initial stage.
• Pregnant women are adequately informed about our solution and operating procedure.
• All women get benefit from our “MotherCare weekly kit”.
• Funding is not a barrier.
• Customer retention rate is 100%.
• Watch and Mothercare kits are being used as planned.

Our solution currently doesn’t have an active customer base because our solution is currently at R&D stage. This work is still bootstrapped by founder’s investment and some amount of prize money. An initial external funding is required to start the pilot project. We used ‘UBS social investment toolkit’ to estimate the numbers. Within the next 12 months, we will try to sell 150 “MotherCare wearable”, .2 M MotherCare weekly kit and have an active user base of 7200 patients who will be registered through our platform. 5 years down the line, our goal is  to occupy good position in this pregnancy related health market and sell two thousand “mothercare wearable”, 10 M MotherCare weekly kit and a successfully registered patient base of 0.1 M in our platform. MotherCare will have nearly 72 k (1 year) and 3.5 M (5 year) normal check-up related hits and 36 k (1 year) and 1 M advanced check-up related hits in our wearable platform after 5 years. We will try to reach 60 healthcare workers tracking 7,200 patients across 240 villages in 1 year and 850 health workers within 5-year time span. At minimum we aspire to be fully deployed in 3 districts (out of the 23 districts of the state) and reach 30,000 mothers and infants.

We are going for partnership with at least 3 regionally strong organization, 2 major pilot projects, joint demos to at least 3 state Govt. to pitch & engage with at least one state government for accessing the untapped market of pregnant customers through our solution and its benefits within next two year. Above data gives an idea of impact for numbers of people who will be benefited directly through our initiative. In organizational perspective, we try to partner with 1 NGO (6 centers) within 1 year and 10 NGOs and 7 local hospitals within 5 year for scaling up. The 'SROI' of our project is nearly 160% as per social investment toolkit.  Throughout the pregnancy period, one customer can save up to 130 USD which in turn reduce their financial burden and encourage them to have child. We are reducing waiting-times for secondary and tertiary investigations for other patients in local hospitals with highly scalable wearable model. This in turn will reduce the burden of patient populations over rural doctors. Pregnant patient normally have check-up to doctors in case of any emergency situation. With the increase in number of patients, the sharing platform inside the app can utilize the pool of cases studies for pregnancy related experiences. Employment of unemployed rural women as health workers can improve their financial condition.

Rural health workers are not well versed with technology. Tuning them with different sets of technological devices is one of the major challenges. Mothercare’s EHR will be extensively used to identify high risk pregnancies as it serves a critical role in providing effective and efficient treatment. Secured transmission of EHR is an important issue. We also identified a major issue during our survey, that 40% people are willing to take medical service but not willing to spend on kit. For a healthy pregnancy ‘Mothercare kit’ holds that much importance that of medical check-ups. The govt. funding for pregnant women are often misutilized by Male (dominating and earning family member). Pilot projects must accelerate the pace at which we establish a strong business model, implementation strategy, and impact assessment. Although, we have experience in these areas we will still require an upper hand in financial aspects, as it plays an important role in order to initiate our start-up and make it fully operating. Initially, the cash is burning at a rapid rate and we are not generating any revenue. There is a requirement of 0.5M grant initially for sustaining the operation. The system will become profitable, after more than 6 quarters of operation. ‘MotherCare’ involves online doctor consultation thereby disrupting the physical interface in traditional doctor centric model. Although situation is evolving but people have a trust issue with online consultation. Certifications from CE, FDA HIPPA, ISO are both time and money consuming. It can hinder our growth.

For financial stability, we require payment from consumers in timely manner. Payment is mostly done by male members. So, it is quite important to convince them to pay. Although a huge chunk of payment is covered by government maternity benefits (Govt.  provides nearly 80 USD to pregnant woman) but still there is significant out of the pocket expenditure. Current observations depict that with communities and local governments help, we can convince family to invest in health and convince them to use the online doctor centric model. Rural Healthcare is a tricky business and the ecosystem has not been developed completely. In current context we are only doing full scale monitoring of pregnant woman but partial monitoring of child. Child monitoring is complex and they are more prone to infection. We are trying to enable health-workers to provide additional value-added services for new-born child via advanced training and earn more. There is an untapped market in the above context. As it is a door to door initiative, same wearable can be used to monitor health parameters of aged family members (vertical scaling), a separate revenue stream to sustain our high out of pocket expenditure. Through PhD experience in HKSUT, founders have fast track contact with patent and certification lawyer. It can ease the certification process. Finally engagement with JHU, 'MIT D lab' or 'solve community' can solve our problem through partnership. We are approaching to different financial organization, central and state govt. of India to secure initial grant for our operation.

We have not selected other

Currently we are a team of 5 members which includes Sayan as our CEO (ECE, PhD student at HKUST). Aayushman, CTO, electronics engineering undergraduate student from IIEST, India. Manisha, VP is a master degree chemistry student in Calcutta University, India. Darshana, VP is a final year student (computer engineering) at HKUST and Palash (Medical Expert), an MD student in cardiology from SSKM, Kolkata.  Apart from above core-team members, 2 technical workers and 3 interns are working as part-time staffs, helping in the development of the technology.

Sayan, CEO of MotherCare, PhD student at HKUST, his previous venture won accolades from IIT Bombay, IIM Kolkata, IIT Kharagpur etc. and featured in Times NOW, The Telegraph, Your story, The Hindu etc. He emerged as the finalist of Stanford India Bio-design Programme. We are working on this area for 4 years. Aayushman, CTO is an electronics engineering student from IIESTS, India. Manisha, VP is a master degree chemistry student in Calcutta University. Darshana, VP is a final year student at HKUST and Palash (Medical Expert), an MD student from SSKM, Kolkata. We have consulted several medical professors to understand different needs of pregnant people. We are the best placed to deliver this solution not only because of our varied expertise in basic science, engineering, medical domain but also because of our being rooted in the communities we serve at the last mile . We have five publications (three accepted + two under review) in this area as well as working to file a patent soon. We have clinical and business mentors from India (Dipankar Sarkar, Ex-dean IIPM Ahmedabad) and Hong Kong (Marie Rosencrantz, Adjunct Professor at HKUST). Apart from that, we have access to huge pool of diverse healthcare problems owing to huge population in eastern India.

We currently partner with two NGOs in Howrah district (West-Bengal, India). They organize health check-up camps for pregnant woman, aged people once in three months. We are providing them monetary and technical expertise to learn the need of patient. 

We provide a platform that bestows service in form of care and treatment to our prime beneficiaries (Pregnant women and infants) while keeping NGOs, private/government healthcare organizations in the loop. The introduction of care is in the form of the following steps: (a) Early pregnancy detection (b) Registration (c) Check-up at regular intervals up to 6 months after pregnancy period.  Operation will end by initiating the vaccination program of the child. Our bundle includes both software and hardware enabled technology solution and livelihood kit to execute the program deployment at the base of the healthcare pyramid. We have multiple payers in the game, government healthcare organizations, NGOs as well as our direct beneficiaries who will pay directly for 'mothercare kit' and services. At the same time, we do approach hospital networks focused on maintaining a similar track of their patients within their systems, and even smaller private clinics in semi-urban area who are looking to stay connected with their patient network. Revenue is directly generated from sales of wearable, 'motherCare' weekly kit and service of basic and advanced healthcare check-up. We will be creating a new channel of dedicated, trained health care workers (Saheli) who will be the last mile of connect between our customers and our platform. We will contact NGOs, Healthcare institutions for accessing their health workers by paying them a considerable part of their monthly wages that they receive from NGOs/healthcare Institutions. At the same time, we are incorporating gynecologists in our system to monitor our patients. 

Currently for basic medical tests rural people need to travel on an average 15 Km. For pregnant woman, single visit costs more than USD 20, which is non-affordable in their context. As they do not travel alone but family members, hence a loss of daily wages increase their financial burden. Not only that, there are several hazards associated with moving of a pregnant woman from one place to another place. There is an already eagerness in rural patients to pay for basic healthcare services and timely consultations. 'Saheli' workers charge them 1.5 USD for basic medical check-up of body vitals. Advanced check-up along with online doctor consultation is priced at 3.5 USD respectively. “MotherCare weekly kits” cost our customers 2.2 USD. The prevalent question of paying money for service is answered by Government fund of nearly 80 USD for pregnant moms. For alternate revenue streams, we by partnering with local NGOs will take contract from the nearby private/government hospital for offering these services on their behalf. We are ready to dilute 12% of our start-up to social VCs or like-minded organizations in order to activate 0.4 M USD funding (seed grant). Greater part of our path to financial stability includes convincing a major health provider to consult our services and subscribe to our model in design of a larger scale program. Demonstrating at a district level, a model of the universalized platform will help us to lay a secure expanding footprint and set a standard in maternal and infant care.                                                                                                                               

As innovators in Maternal and new-born health field, we want our MotherCare initiative to be an end-to-end solution that anticipates the hidden risk in pregnancy and deals with it at a greater level of sophistication. To address this global issue and lay a serious impact based on our developmental outcomes, MIT SOLVE – world’s leading incubators for tech entrepreneurs will be a perfect partner to us. We are a young team of entrepreneurs, having a bold vision but lacking expertise needed to scale our model. The upcoming years in post COVID-19 scenarios will be very crucial in view of developing and testing a market ready version of our prototype as well as establishing our business model and market penetration strategy. Assistance from Solve experts will be crucial to secure this end. Applying to Solve would lead us to an opportunity to have an in-hand experience with like-minded change makers, seasoned technology scalers, creative impact investors, and making it a solution not just for high risk pregnancy in India but across the globe. Becoming a part of Solve’s community will help us in turning 'MotherCare' into a brand so as to overcome the conventional taboos prevailing in the rural society related to pregnancy. The equity-free grant offered by Solve and the related prizes would help us to focus more capital on R&D and in solving related logistical issues. It helps us to get in touch with pharmaceutical and nutrition companies to explore potential opportunities to make 'MotherCare' sustainable .                                                                     

We are a young and enthusiastic team of passionate entrepreneurs, engineers and STEM researchers but we need mentorship and guidance in building the best solutions in the most optimized manner. Although our team has business experience but still we are still lagging behind in business acumen (no MBA graduate). Although, we have an interesting line of products but aesthetics may play an important role for better customer experience. Different impact organizations from USA, EU have undergone healthcare related studies in rural India. Partnership can open their key findings, opinion to us. High profile board members and adviser can rectify our error and guide us in proper direction. To get ahead of our competitors patent filing, certification is a key issue. We want expert guidance in this matter. For those reasons, partnerships are important for us. 

Our initiative requires scaling through rural health centres, that are government health centres operated by midwives and physicians who holds the base of primary-health pyramid. We are trying to apply different incubators in india and abroad like IIT Bombay incubation cell (SINE) for mentorship and scaling. Listed below are name of few esteemed organizations that we would like to partner for following reasons:

•  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: - For laying an in-hand experience with senior public health researchers and statisticians, primarily focusing on data analysis and validation. We have initiated an early level talk with them and hope to finalize it within 1-2 year.

• American International Health Alliance (AIHA): Mentoring on training and supervision of our frontline health workers (saheli), especially given the diversity of these workers in India.

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, especially MIT-D Lab, for guidance on AI, developing automated clinical results and advancement of our wearable platform. (Technical guidance)

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, J-PAL Lab for guidance in business model refining and implementation.They have huge experience on working in India specifically in rural bengal.

• Women Deliver:It is a global advocacy organization for improving the health of women and girls with a focus on health system strengthening, capacity-building of ground level workers and work on evidence-based early interventions. It will be helpful to align with them for communicating the results of our analysis, pitching the strengths of our solution at a global level and influencing policymakers in India and abroad through their networks.

There is a requirement of an affordable, healthy solution that can cater all the needs of a pregnant woman in resource limited settings for a safe and healthy pregnancy experience. At MotherCare, we are developing integrated wearable which is capable to answer almost all questions related to pregnancy complications. It is designed for systematic cardio respiratory and bio marker measurementduring pregnancy phase. MotherCare is acting as door to door health service provider. Cardio respiratory module can detect Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, ECG, hemoglobin concentration. Based on those data, we are trying to provide fitness and health analytics. Another module, Wireless electrochemical detectors based on screen printed electrode can be used for point-of-care diagnostics. We are integrating electrochemical lactate, glucose, cholesterol biosensor by using disposable screen-printed electrode to measure their concentration in pregnant woman sweat along with HCG from urine. App is acting an aggregator system in between patient and doctor. The app is acting as an aggregator system between patients and the doctors who can administer any uncertain changes in the patient’s health and can prevent fatal risk in pregnancies. Based on severity of the case, we are charging 1.5 USD for basic check and 3.5 USD for advanced check-up.The prize will support the development and initial pilot (n = 2400 women) of this specific capability in our solution, to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.

More than 30 M pregnancies in India are served by midwives.  Front-line workers lack sophisticated compact instruments especially for complications like preterm births that contribute to 43% of neonatal deaths in India. Current solutions lack proper accuracy, expensive, not portable, and need clinical expertise to operate at full scale. Hence, majority of the preterm births are not well managed or are managed with sub-optimal care at the base level, majority are referred to urban-centric obstetricians (30 k in India) creating delay in the process and increased financial burden along with increased transportation risk. 

We are developing a community health worker ecosystem (Saheli) by engaging rural mid-aged women. Initially, they will be trained by the eminent organizations, doctors and health workers in India providing business and technology training that will increase their earning potential. Design of an advanced all – in-one wearable can reduce the effective checking time and improve their efficiency. Their work will be categorized into following steps (a) Initiating with registration of pregnant woman, (b) check-up throughout the pregnancy time span and continue till 6 months after pregnancy, (c) Terminate the process by enlisting the pregnant woman's baby in the vaccination program. They will provide doorstep service to fulfill this purpose and will also be acting as our last mile of contact between our patient base and our platform. 

Using the aforesaid prize, we aim to commercially validate MotherCare ecosystem serving 2400 rural pregnancies and in the process, train 200+ frontline workers under our 'MotherCare' program.

Estimation of blood pressure through our wearable is dependent on feature extraction (AI/ML) technique. Processing a large data set for finding best curve fitting method requires artificial intelligence. This fund will be utilized to find the best curve for BP estimation by working on more than 2000 population. Based on health data, we are providing fitness and health analytics. This process is also dependent on machine learning. Through Mothercare app, pregnant women are sharing different experiences during pregnancy which ultimately creates a pool of cases, that helps in assessing further interventions. Processing and sorting of cases requires strong data science requirement. Funding will help us to contact large data service providing companies. 

We will use the aforesaid mentioned prize to skillfully and tactically implement the above-mentioned solutions in our wearable to produce the best optimized product. 

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually a big brand name in maternal health care domain. Having them on your board can attract more investors towards our idea. As we stated earlier, there is an initial requirement in grant for our start-up to sustain properly. Equity less funding at the beginning will help our organisation to scale through pilot very easily. As we would require 1M USD (0.5+0.3+0.2) for our solution to sustain and be fully operational as planned. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a perfect fit in it. 

Problem: -

In India, every 20 minutes a pregnant woman dies due to pregnancy related complications like CVD, hypertension, hemorrhage etc. WHO-UNICEF carried out a research on maternal morbidity in 35 countries where India ranked the top, with 17.1% due to pregnancy related death. Pregnancy related complications increase the risk of maternal, infant death as well as contain adverse outcomes such as miscarriage, stillbirth, and premature birth.  Annually in India, 0.5M babies are still born and 3.5M are premature leading to deaths and long-term developmental problems. Nearly, 90% of these deaths occur in rural, tribal and resource-limited infrastructure, who suffers the most due to denial in equitable access to services, most of them can be prevented. Lack of gynecologists, medical tests, diagnostic facilities, healthcare centers further limits the intervention in rural areas. Current complete prenatal coverage is only 21%, mostly due to the lack of effective tools to monitor risks by front-line workers. Post COVID-19's collateral damage increase infant death and MMR directly as well as indirectly. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health predicted an 8% to 38% increase in maternal deaths over next 6 months as well as an additional 300k to 1.2M children deaths under 5. 

Solution: -

We are designing an advanced wearable for cardio respiratory and bio marker measurement. This device can reduce MMR and infant mortality rate by introducing the care in the form of the following steps: (a) Early pregnancy detection (b) Registration (c) Check-up at regular intervals. An assistive care is provided by distributing MotherCare Weekly kits (priced at 2.2 USD with very little profit margin) consisting of necessities (food supplement, iron tablet, folic acid tablet) of pregnancy period for one week.  Based on severity of the case, we are charging 1.5 USD for basic check and 3.5 USD for advanced check-up. Our concept is based on research work of the founders. 

Use of grant: -

This grant can speed up our product development process. Our process reduce the financial burden of pregnancy (SROI is nearly 160%) and improves financial condition of rural woman by engaging them as health workers (saheli).  Our theory is to build a pregnancy care platform that helps in connecting pregnant women to the mainstream maternity facilities through ground level women health force in a cost-effective manner. A family can save more than 130 USD during pregnancy period by using our setup.Within the next 12 months, we will try to sell 150 “MotherCare wearable”, .2M MotherCare weekly kit and have an active user base of 7200 patients who will be registered through our platform. 5 years down the line, our goal is to become a standard for the state of West-Bengal and to scale this solution to sell two thousand “mothercare wearable”, 10M MotherCare weekly kit and a successfully registered patient base of 0.1M in our platform. MotherCare will have nearly 72 k (1 year) and 3.5 M (5 year) normal check-up related hits and 36 k (1 year) and 1M advanced check-up related hits in our wearable platform after 5 years. We will try to reach 60 healthcare workers tracking 7,200 patients across 240 villages in 1 year and 850 health workers within 5-year time span. At minimum we aspire to be fully deployed in 3 districts (out of the 23 districts of the state) and reach 30,000 mothers and infants.

In the end, we are confident that our unique approach towards solving the global challenge of Maternal & new-born health will lay a profound impact of reduced maternal mortality and morbidity rates and reduced neonatal deaths with a strong developmental outcome that makes our solution stand apart from others.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded award will provide us the opportunity to bridge the acute gaps in our initiative of door to door pregnancy care (starting from three months after pregnancy detection to six months after healthy delivery of the baby) and also to integrate our solution so that we provide the best possible solution in the most optimized manner. 

It will further help our team to strengthen our position to deliver our solution and services and also to validate it with our customer base of rural pregnant women. 

All of the above mentioned points proves that we are a right candidate for this funded award.

MotherCare lays its direct emphasis on the problem of poor healthcare access, diagnosis and monitoring pregnancy care in resource-limited setting, which leads to high-risk pregnancies and ultimately proves fatal to both mother and the child. MotherCare's appropriately fits in SOLVE's global challenge under the name of 'Maternal & Newborn Health' because we intend to reduce the increased maternal and morbidity rates. Firstly, our solution is a for profit organization and scalable entity. As we stated earlier, there is an initial requirement in grant for our start-up to sustain properly. 

our Solution -

We are designing an advanced wearable for cardiorespiratory and biomarker measurement. This device can reduce MMR and infant mortality rate by introducing the care in the form of the following steps: (a) Early pregnancy detection (b) Registration (c) Check-up at regular intervals. An assistive care is provided by distributing MotherCare Weekly kits (priced at 2.2 USD with very little profit margin) consisting of necessities (food supplement, iron tablet, folic acid tablet) of pregnancy period for one week.  Based on severity of the case, we are charging 1.5 USD for basic check and 3.5 USD for advanced check-up. This grant can speed up our product development process.

Use of grant -

Our process reduces the financial burden of pregnancy (SROI is nearly 160%) and improves financial condition of rural woman by engaging them as health workers (saheli).  Our theory is to build a pregnancy care platform that helps in connecting pregnant women to the mainstream maternity facilities through ground level women health force in a cost-effective manner. A family can save more than 130 USD during pregnancy period by using our setup.Within the next 12 months, we will try to sell 150 “MotherCare wearable”, .2M MotherCare weekly kit and have an active user base of 7200 patients who will be registered through our platform. 5 years down the line, our goal is to become a standard for the state of West-Bengal and to scale this solution to sell two thousand “mothercare wearable”, 10M MotherCare weekly kit and a successfully registered patient base of 0.1M in our platform. MotherCare will have nearly 72 k (1 year) and 3.5 M (5 year) normal check-up related hits and 36 k (1 year) and 1M advanced check-up related hits in our wearable platform after 5 years. We will try to reach 60 healthcare workers tracking 7,200 patients across 240 villages in 1 year and 850 health workers within 5-year time span. At minimum we aspire to be fully deployed in 3 districts (out of the 23 districts of the state) and reach 30,000 mothers and infants.

In the end, we are confident that our unique approach towards solving the global challenge of Maternal & new-born health will lay a profound impact of reduced maternal mortality and morbidity rates and reduced neonatal deaths with a strong developmental outcome that makes our solution stand apart from others. 

All of the above mentioned points make us a right candidate for this award.