Swastha Naari

Antenatal checkup (ANC) is one of the important indicators for maternal and newborn health. Pregnant women should have 4 ANC visits according to protocol but there is huge difference in 1st and 4th ANC visits i.e. 84% vs 69% according to NDHS 2016. One of the main reasons to address from health provider side is lack of follow up to pregnant women after their first ANC visit resulting in loss of data. 

To establish a proper follow-up mechanism a simple mobile-based application will be built for health workers of health posts making them accountable for the follow up of pregnant women for ANCs. The app will also help them keep records of pregnant women who have visited their health posts or any other health facilities preventing data loss of ANC check-ups. Scaling up globally will help to reduce maternal mortality rate whose primary cause is death due to pregnancy-related complications.

According to NDHS 2016, maternal mortality rate(MMR) in Nepal is 239 per lakh live births. One of the main reason lies death of mothers due to pregnancy-related complications. Pregnant women track those pregnacy-related complications, nutrition intake, iron and folic supplementation and so in in their antenatal visits to the health facilities. Antenatal checkup (ANC) is one of the main indicator for maternal and newborn health where 4 ANC visits should be done according to protocol while in Nepal only 69 percent pregnant women receive 4 ANC visits. Geographical regions, lack of proper counselling services ,  lack of infrastructure, no proper follow up mechanism are some of the reasons for low ANC visits.

Our mobile based application is addressing the problem from service provider side i.e. lack of follow up mechanism. A reminder app where health care provider will be notified with the pregnant women details to follow for next ANC. The health service provider will either notify pregnant women or FCHVs (female community health volunteers) in case she could not be in contact for her ANC and if she had received ANC service from any other health facilities then health service provider will keep record of it and report accordingly. 

A simple mobile based application for health workers in health posts which will work as a reminder app for them. The application will include basic details of pregnant women like her name, address, contact number including her expected delivery date , pregnancy related complications if any and date of last menstrual period. The app will also include details of FCHVs located nearby her location so that in case the pregnant women goes out of contact for any reason then FCHV will visit the concerned pregnant women and report health worker about her health condition. 

Once the health worker has set the reminder after the details of pregnant women being stored in the app then the app will notify health worker of concerned pregnant women for her next visits. The application will work offline as well so it will notify the health worker regardless of internet facilities. The app will in one hand remind the health worker for follow up in case the pregnant women has forgotten for her ANC visits while in other hand it will also keep the record of received ANC service from any other health facilities by the pregnant women resulting to prevent loss of data.

The solution will benefit pregnant women and health workers of health facilities. According to preliminary findings from the telephone interview of health workers of different health posts, two major findings were, one there is no proper follow up mechanism due to which they are clueless whether the pregnant women has completed her 4 ANC visits or not leading the huge difference in 1st and 4th ANC visits while secondly it is tedious for them to look service register each time for follow up. Besides, during the field visit most of the pregnant women has complaint about the in-accountability of health workers regarding their all ANC visits while some of them has issues regarding geographical regions like not having roads to travel.

So, we are trying to engage the health service provider of health posts through our solution to make them more accountable by establishing proper follow up mechanism as well as making their work of follow up easier through digitization. Although the service providers are our consumers but the end user will be definitely the pregnant women because health workers will notify as well as counsel them to visit health facilities for ANC services as well as through FCHVs. 

When the health service provider do not follow up, then pregnant mothers do not come for ANC visit resulting in lack of services they get at ANC visits like counselling , identification of danger sign iron and folic acid supplementation deriving them from quality health services and increasing the risk during delivery and on newborn health.  

The solution will increase ANC service utilization that in return will expand the health services provided by the health workers which will benefit pregnant women, new mothers and new born health while it will also help pregnant women to get quality health care services.

Traditional method of record keeping is followed in our state's health post and antenatal checkups, which is crucial during pregnancy is ignored and most of the health posts don not follow up with the pregnant women. Hence, our solution would be innovative to solve the root cause of this problem.

Our solution is a mobile based application that caters as a reminder application.

In a digital world, simple reminder apps have been popular and also it is more beneficial when people with less technical knowledge can use it. Our application whose development is in progress is easy to use and user friendly application which will prove to be more compatible to keep track of Antenatal Checkups in health posts.

Currently our solution is targeted for health posts in one of the peri-urban city i.e Syangja,Nepal. In a span of one year, our solution will serve atleast all the health post of one province. In five years, we target to serve all the provinces in our country.

Currently the COVID-19 has been a barrier as we aren't able to go the field to execute our solution.

Since, everything has been digital we plan on creating an impact and reaching out to people with our solutions digitally.

This solution is tech and health based, our team is technically sound (Computer engineering graduate) and one of us is a public health student. Considering this, we believe we can solve the targeted problem with our solution.

No, we aren't partenered with any organizations