DigitalMamaKit

The current maternal mortality ratio in Uganda is about 336 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Infant mortality is 43 deaths per 1000 live births, with 42% of the mortality occurring during the neonatal period. This is due in part to poor maternal and newborn practices throughout the continuum of care, from antenatal care, postnatal care, skilled birth attendance to newborn care during childbirth. Also, there is very poor male participation in all maternal and newborn care requirements such as encouraging women to seek healthcare, accompanying them to healthcare centers for HIV counselling and other support services etc.

DigitalMamaKit helps mothers prevent maternal and infant mortality through an intelligent SMS and USSD app that uses natural language processing to provide tailored prenatal/postnatal information services to rural mothers. The DigitalMamaKit app has five main components:

1) An information service which provides mothers with tailored prenatal/postnatal information services from top health experts delivered in their own local languages .

2) Health worker (VHT) access which enables mothers to access nearby VHTs or health centers to support them at the different stages of the pregnancy and after birth.

3) Savings Module which allows mothers to save money by making mobile money deposits to their DigitalMamaKit accounts on their phones. This money can only be used to pay for healthcare services such as birth fees, transport to and from the health center etc across partnering health centers, clinics, transport providers, health kiosks etc.

4) Male partner information service whose aim is to enlighten men about the need for them to support their wives during pregnancy and after birth. The males are also given key health information about how they can play a key role in preventing maternal and infant mortality.

5) Inquiry/Support Service where mothers are connected to a support center that allows them to ask any questions and receive feedback from health experts in an effective way, without language, tech or cultural barriers through our two-way translated communication platform.

The image above is a screenshot of the DigitalMamaKit USSD/SMS app showing the main service menu. Note that, this menu is available in different local languages as pre-determined by the mother when signing up.

Our solution targets rural mothers (especially first time mothers) who do not have easy access to quality prenatal/postnatal services as well as information. We selected Katwe landing site, a rural and remote landing site located along the shores of Lake Katwe in Kasese district - Western Uganda for our pilot because of its very high teenage pregnancy rates and HIV prevalence. Our solution allows the teenage mothers to subscribe to our service in any preferred local language so that they can receive prenatal/postnatal information services, receive reminders about what they are expected to do at different stages of their pregnancy and  as well as get connected to VHTs and other health experts for support.

Owing to the fact that our company is headquartered in Kasese district, western part of Uganda and our pilot area is a landing site in a rural and remote area in Kasese district, we are close in terms of proximity to be able to serve and monitor our activities in our pilot area. Also, we have partnered with local VHTs and health centres through the office of the district health officer. Their collaboration has helped us refine our solution to meet exact needs of our target clients. Through the VHTs and some selected teenage pregnant mothers, we have received good insights into their key challenges and their expectations. We have incorporated key features to our system to address these challenges. This is partly why we chose SMS and USSD as our delivery platforms because they are super affordable, reliable and accessible by the teenage mothers as well as health workers (since they do not require internet to work). Also, two of our team members were once teenage mothers who later got lucky to go back to school and further their studies. Their own experiences help tailor our innovation in the right direction.

We hope to land like-minded partners that can continue to offer us mentorship and help us overcome market barriers that may exist in new markets when expanding beyond our own market. We strongly believe that our solution is needed beyond Uganda. However, understanding the cultural differences as well as key market information of such new markets requires support of an experienced partner. Such a partner can be found through SOLVE. Also, we believe solve is the right place to get partners that we can be able to share experiences with and also improve on our networking.

Our solution uses natural language processing, meaning, it is able to pick any local language message e.g an inquiry from a teenage mother written in her own local language and translates it to English for the benefit of the health expert who reads that message. Once the health expert has offered feedback in English, that too is translated back to the local language of the teenage mother for easy comprehension. We believe this is a great addition and it creates inclusivity in our service offering. We expect our solution to change the market because it can be used by people from different walks of life, cultures and backgrounds and through its two-way communication, make it possible for people of different backgrounds to communicate and support each other easily hence creating positive impact. 

Due to the sensitivity of the data that we handle, we use blockchain in data management for data security, data quality, data traceability, real-time data analysis and data sharing.

1) Reduce maternal and infant mortality rate among rural women in Uganda. This will be achieved through granting mothers access to quality prenatal/postnatal information services, connecting them to healthworkers and giving them reminders about pregnancy care at different stages.This will enable them prepare better for their pregnancy and hence reduce chances of maternal mortality.

2) Improve male involvement in supporting their women through prenatal postnatal and perinatal stages. Through empowering men with more information about advantages of supporting their women during pregnancy, we could reduce maternal and infant mortality rates significantly.

3) Improve pregnancy preparedness through a tailored saving scheme. By enabling mothers to save specifically for their pregnancies, they will be better prepared throughout the pregancy.

The following are our key progress indicators:

1) Total number of returning users on the platform.

2) Total number of safe deliveries made by our subscribed members.

3) Query satisfaction rates on our platform i.e number of mothers who have made an inquiry and received satisfactory help or response.

4) Short Surveys on our platform to help measure impact.

We expect our solution to have an impact on the problem because of its inclusivity in nature. Through covering different stages of a pregnancy and making our services available in different local languages, we have positioned our solution to become a one stop centre and a MUST-HAVE for all mothers. If put to use, our solution will help reduce the rate of maternal and infant mortality while providing quality medical care services to rural mothers at a very affordable subscription fee.

SMS and USSD technology. Users dial a pre-defined USSD code to access our service menu (which is available in different local languages). They navigate the menu to the menu-item of interest. Once there, the requested information is served to them via SMS. The SMS too comes translated in different languages depending on user preference.

We use blockchain in data management for data security, data quality, data traceability, real-time data analysis and data sharing.

We are an equal opportunity organisation that does not discriminate against gender, cultural background, special needs etc. We embrace diversity, equity and inclusivity and usually encourage people of special needs to come work with us. Our policy on employment specifies this and emphasizes it greatly.

Our business model is subscription based. We provide mothers with quality prenatal and postnatal information services, connect them to health workers for support as well as enable them to save for their pregnancy costs. Mothers have to subscribe to our service for a small fee in order to access our platform and services. We believe in the power of numbers i.e "charge a small and affordable subscription fee and encourage millions to subscribe".

At the moment, we are looking at a combination of different revenue streams i.e grants, subscriptions and raising capital. However, since our solution has fixed infrastructure expenses regardless of traffic being handled, i.e USSD gateway/ SMS Gateway, moving forward, we shall only have operational costs as the key expenses, hence making subscription revenue sufficient in future and ultimately making us sustainable.

We have so far received up to EUR 50,000 in grants that has helped us establish ourselves (pay for SMS gateway, USSD Gateway, Operational costs etc). Moving forward, we believe that with an increased user base, subscription revenue will be sufficient to achieve sustainability since most of the fixed heavy purchases have already been made.