CUGI CARINGMAMA PLATFORM

The project is aimed at  improving communication  using mobile phones to mothers who have previously had to rely on mass media and community health workers for maternal health related education and information in their own languages- languages they understand.

We are building a maternal health platform capable that can scale up or down depending on the target mother and is capable of running maternal health messaging using IVR ( Integrated Voice Recording) which is our unique proposition. We will additionally use USSD, SMS , Web and App but envisage that the IVR component will be the most useful deployment for mothers who are illiterate. Needed technology i.e. IVR,USSD and SMS can be delivered using phones that are not internet capable.

This solution can create a powerful communication tool for maternal health across the developing world where literacy rates are low and messages need to be delivered in local languages.

Women make up more than two-thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate people. In East Africa alone more than 40 million adult women are illiterate. Analysis of the cross sectional WHO Global Survey on Maternal and Perinatal Health  report (2011) shows that lower levels of maternal education were associated with higher maternal mortality even amongst women able to access facilities providing intrapartum care.  Most mass media maternal health education is delivered is delivered either in national languages or in poster and radio format. In many cases rural illiterate women neither understand the national language and the educational material has not been translated into all the spoken languages (e.g. In Kenya there are 42 languages) and most mothers cannot read the messages even when delivered via posters or SMS since they cannot read. These mothers therefore struggle to understand why the need for pre-natal or post-natal clinic visits or the benefits of good nutrition.

The platform helps improve understanding of maternal health messages amongst mums who are illiterate who are usually excluded due to lack of education. The maternal health content is delivered in their own native languages in a medium that they can easily access – mobile phone. According to a survey done in 2016, large majorities in all six sub-Saharan countries surveyed own mobile phones. Ownership is highest in South Africa, where about nine-in-ten adults own a mobile device, and lowest in Tanzania, where over three-quarters own a phone.We envisage that we use the following to deliver the message;

1. Mobile phones (any basic mobile phone not necessarily data enabled phones) will be used as primary tools to deliver the message using the voice functionality.
2. Pre-recorded relevant local language messages and reminders will be delivered in agreed intervals or scheduled dependent on date of birth of child or expected date of delivery through a voice call. 
3. We will provide reminders on pre and post-natal clinic visits as well as messaging on health, nutrition and sanitation
4. We will provide an option for mum’s connect with a health professional who speaks their language via an option for a call back 

Target - Mothers who speak their native languages but are unable to read and write those languages and therefore cannot understand messages delivered via posters, SMS and are largely dependent on radio or TV messages which do not offer reach or personalisation.

Need Understanding- I have a good understanding of these mothers as I grew up with them and interact with them in my work. I intend to test the solution with some mothers.

How are we addressing their needs?

With our Mama Platform, we’re helping reduce maternal and child mortality rates by delivering maternal health education in a language people speak by removing literacy barriers to message delivery method. We envisage that more women will understand the need to visit pre and post-natal clinics. Our platform will be able to ;

1. Deliver relevant messages to mothers in a language they understand
2. Deliver reminders for pre and post-natal clinic visits at the relevant times depending on the date of birth of the EDD ( Expected Delivery Date) of the mother or child.

Most women who cannot read and write are unable to access necessary information with regards to maternal health because it is in written form. When in audio form, the most widely spoken local language is used for TV or Radio messaging leading to mothers many being disadvantaged.

In TV and Radio, it is not possible to personalise messages to each mothers EDD or child's age therefore messages when accessible in audio format are not personalised.

Our platform delivers personalised language specific audio messaging to mothers from one platform ensuring that mothers understand the message and making it highly relevant.

This solution is different because it is primarily built with the target in mind i.e mothers who cannot read and write. These are the most vulnerable people who have little or no access to maternal health information or services.

Many solutions exist like WhattoExpect App, BabyCenter Pregnancy Tracker and others. These are primarily aimed at Mothers that have access to data and smartphones and can read and write.

MomConnect is a South African based platform that uses USSD, SMS and WhatsApp to deliver maternal health messages in conjunction with the Ministry of Health. However , it is reliant on SMS and USSD which also require one to be literate to read the SMS and WhatsApp messages.

Our solution will rely on voice and will be delivered in local languages. We can load uptown 8 languages on a single platform. Our point of view is that each person understands their language and don't need to read it to understand it. If we can deliver information using only the voice functionality we are more likely to get people to understand our message as well as remind them to visit clinics during appropriate times.

We believe our solution is unique because it is targeted at a specific audience  and we are using tools that are easily accessible, attainable and do not require behaviour change.

In addition we plan to work with clinics in the second phase to use fingerprint or facial recognition to get record clinic visits and incentive behaviour change. 

We plan to use existing technology as a base for our platform i.e.  

Interactive Voice Recording - This will be primarily used as a delivery method for the messaging to  mothers. Educational messages, tips, reminders will be pre-recorded and saved as voice files in different languages

SMS AND USSD- These will be used as primary registration tools for social workers and anyone who wants to enrol a mother into the platform

Fingerprint and Facial Recognition - This will be used by health centres or providers who want to be able to register mum's and use as tools to monitor visits or incentivise behaviour change

App- We envisage that as literacy grows and adoption of technology increases we may be able to move people from IVR (voice) to SMS to App in the same platform. We envisage a platform that integrates all the technologies and works seamlessly between them.

The solution uses a widely used technology that we experience everyday in call centres. It is used to manage wait times or to direct people to the relevant team handling a type of complaint. 

It is also widely used in robocalls for marketing and sales purposes. The idea is to use this technology in new application and new ways to manage a different target market for a different reason. 

Please see ways it has been used in marketing to add a new layer to a campaign to give it an emotional angle by introducing IVR from known celebrities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ThMb7rHr3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Y63GBxjlg

Currently - We are not serving any customers but the product is under development and we expect to enrol around 50 000 mothers before the end of 2020

In the next one year (End of 2021) we expect to serve around 1 Million Mothers in Kenya

In the next 5 years we expect to enrol over 10 Million Mothers in the East African region

Goals of the Project

• We envisage that through our educational message we will be able to ;
• Improve the health of the mothers and their children through educating them about good nutrition during pregnancy and also for their children under five years
• Through our reminders we will be able to reduce maternal and infant deaths through timely reminders on their visits to clinics for pre and post natal visits. 
• We expect that by mothers visiting clinics and getting educated through our platform on the importance of attending clinics, we can be able to reduce a lot of the complications that come with pregnancy.
• To help mothers get enough knowledge to enrol their children to school and help improve literacy with the family setting

In future we expect;

• To get donors to use the platform to incentivise mum's to change behaviour using our fingerprint and facial recognition software
• We also expect to get organisations willing to help mothers and children below five years to use our platform to be able to reach them and help through either donations or grants
• We expect that through all the initiatives we will be able better health outcomes in the communities and in turn should lead to better economic outcomes for affected families

Current Barriers 

Market Barrier - We need to be able to access organisations that fund projects in maternal health especially in rural areas. We need to be able to partner and work with them to bring the product to life and begin measuring impact

Next Five Year Barriers

Financial and Technical - As the platform grows and we get more mothers enrolled into the program , we need to increase hosting capacity and have more developers to support the program. We are a start up and will use our funds to get the program up and running but we need resources to scale

Legal - As we move to other geographies, we need to be able to understand the legal barriers in those markets and how to successfully overcome them including the need to manage privacy issues

Current Barriers;

Market Barriers - I intend to approach a few NGO's with field works in a region and offer the services for FREE on a trial 6 month period in-order to start having proof of concept. Once this is up and running I plan to use their network of referrals to enrol more people

I then plan to approach organisations like USAID to partner with to get scale to be able to approach governments to use the platform for their maternal health programmes

Future Barriers - Financial,Technical and Legal

Once we have proof of concept in terms of ability to deliver behavioural outcomes, we expect that we will be able to attract the right partners to help us expand and create capacity to meet our challenges be they financial, technical or legal

Our current organisation CUGI is a marketing for profit company that provides solutions for clients using the same technology to reach their target audiences i.e consumers and retailers in rural areas to help change behaviour and purchase products.

Whilst seeing how we are able to affect behaviour in this environment , we decided to use the same knowledge and framework in the non-profit arena.

We have invested funds into building the technical platform for the maternal and child health. We intend to use that platform for a non profit venture into maternal health.

We have 5 full time staff that work on Maternal Health at CUGI.

We however have contracted the development of the platform to other organisations that will help build the separate parts of the platform. The organisations are;

1. Massive Dynamic - Kenya Based helps with Project Management
2. MaiBiz Technologies Private Limited - India Based working on the base platform for USSD, SMS and IVR
3. Hexadots Technologies Pvt Ltd  - India based working on App Development

I have spent over over 23 years working in Africa in a marketing organisation selling products in the FMCG field. Most of the time, I worked on categories like toothpaste, deodorant, spreads, food additive and mobile phones. Most of these require behaviour change and are aimed at improving health and economic outcomes for consumers. I know the strategies to use to get consumers to change behaviour and how long this takes. It takes a concerted effort at education, sampling and rewarding positive behaviour change. Therefore I can lead an effort aimed at changing behaviour in a related field. In spreads, toothpaste and food additives our programs are primarily based on educating mothers who in turn help change behaviour either on themselves or their children,

Our client service team has been helping with designing proposals and implementing strategies for behavioural change in the FMCG space for the last 4 years so understand the dynamics of that.

Our health care and nutrition content advisors are experts in understanding what we need to achieve in-order to help mothers and children get the desired outcomes as well as desired behaviours.

Finally our IT technical experts and partners have been helping us with our current platform aimed at FMCG clients and will be positioned to apply the same base knowhow in helping us develop the maternal health platform which is essentially based on the same base technology.

The organisations that we work with as suppliers and are working on the maternal and child health platform are;

1. Massive Dynamic - Kenya Based helps with Project Management
2. MaiBiz Technologies Private Limited - India Based working on the base platform for USSD, SMS and IVR
3. Hexadots Technologies Pvt Ltd  - India based working on App Development

This will be a Free-for-service

We will be Selling social services directly to clients or a third-party payer in this case organisations such as USAID, Local NGO's, Corporate clients or Local governments. The aim is that they will pay for the service in-order tp be able to reach their target of reducing mother and child mortality.

Our platform offers good tools for monitoring and evaluation of their programs and therefore they can see value for their money directly and make the right decisions for their organisations

We will establish an appropriate fee structure vis a vis the benefits and will hopefully be per beneficiary registered on the platform.

I am applying to Solve as I am looking for the following;

• Access and exposure to organisations or groups especially in the NGO world who would be interested in the solution we are offering as a way to monitor and evaluate the programs they fund in maternal health across the developing world
• Receive mentorship and strategic advice from experts in the Solve and MIT networks
• Attend Solve at MIT, our annual flagship event Ito gain exposure
• Get funding/ grant in the initial phase of the program to help in the first 2 years of operation

• We need help unmarking, media and exposure in-order to reach organisations that are interested in funding programs in maternal health in developing countries and especially focusing on the rural poor communities that are hard to reach.
• We need help developing the legal and regulatory matters when we expand to different geographies and especially where we need government support in accessing rural health institutions that will be key id delivering. Organisations like USAID and Belinda and Bill Gates foundations have access to governments and can help us unlock these areas.

1. Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation
2. USAID

Our solution is focused on Women and uses technology to help improve the health and lives of women and children. If funded well this solution has the ability to significantly improve the lives of women and children in the most marginalised areas of society.

The solution itself is also led and managed by a women who comes from a disadvantaged background and who understand very well the struggles and needs of women and would therefore be more invested to see the solution succeed.

The solution would help healthcare workers especially those in the field by helping them refer mothers to clinics.

It would also help them meet their goal of getting more mothers to visit pre and post natal clinic visit on time by doing reminder messaging.

If the tracking of visits to the clinic is adopted using the biometric technology that we intend to deploy then health workers can easily track how the patients are adhering to the health milestones for maternal health.

If incentives can be added for mothers who visit the clinics it can further advance the ability of social workers and health care providers to successfully do their job

Our solution is primarily aimed at improving maternal and newborn health in developing countries amongst the poorest people in the world who also happen to have no access to education.

The funds will help us start to quickly bring the solution to live and be able to demo it to the Ministry of Health and the County Health Departments who we hope will see how powerful the solution is and quickly help us sign up clinics and mothers onto the program.

We believe and share the goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation of improving the health of the most vulnerable. I grew up in the rural villages, I speak their language and I understand the challenges intimately having to deal with my grandparents who are illiterate and seeing them struggle to get us the grandchildren or neighbours to come read messages on their phones and then explain to them in their language the message content.

I therefore understand what is required and needed to change the communication at scale as social workers can only reach so many mothers at a time. I hope you help me get this solution to market quickly