On 13 July 2021, the DERBI Foundation is set to formally launch as a Social Innovation in Health Initiative (SIHI) country research hub in India. The DERBI Foundation, hosted by the Dayananda Sagar Institutions in Bangalore, India, is a technology incubation center being supported by the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. DERBI will be a fully self-financed SIHI country hub and adds to SIHI’s growing presence in the Asian region, along with China, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
After its participation in last year’s SIHI Partners Workshop and with the technical support of the SIHI Secretariat, DERBI joined the SIHI network in early 2021 and led its first nationwide call for solutions, dubbed SIHI India Healthcare Excellence Award: A Recognition of Social Innovation and Health Impact Creators.
DERBI’s open call received 43 submissions, and after a thorough review process with a group of evaluators, the top solutions were announced on 20 June. These are the Khushi Baby and SaveMom, both innovatively working to reduce maternal and child mortality rates in India.
Khushi Baby’s longitudinal reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health (RMNCH) platform is a digital platform that addresses the high maternal and child mortality rate in Rajasthan, India’s largest state. Among the contributing factors that the innovation tackles are the healthcare delivery gaps resulting from a paper-based or siloed digital monitoring system and poor connectivity in some areas.
The digital platform includes a mobile application for healthcare workers to track a continuum of care – from family planning, perinatal care, child immunization up to early childhood development – and a dashboard to facilitate health officials’ timely decision-making. Mothers and children are able to share their offline medical records through near-field communication (NFC) health card at the point of care. Alongside the platform, follow-up household visits for high-risk cases are conducted and voice call reminders for the community are sent.
Khushi Baby’s mHealth platform. Credit: Khushi Baby
Over the past five years, more than 45,000 mothers and children have been monitored through the platform, and 150 nurses and 400 villages are actively engaged in the programme. A two-year randomized controlled trial among 3,000 infants showed that there was a 12% increase in the communities’ uptake of child immunization and a decrease in malnutrition by 4%.
SaveMom addresses high-risk pregnancies due to missed antenatal check-ups and poor access to health facilities during pregnancy. SaveMom provides personalized maternal care to mothers from remote regions in India through the AlloKit, an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled telemedicine software. The AlloKit is a homecare kit that comprises a wearable device that tracks a pregnant mother’s activity (Allowear), a health monitoring device that records her vital signs (Allotricoder), and a smart weighing device (AlloBMI). The data is sent from the homecare kit to a mobile phone via Bluetooth and to a doctor via mobile data. Using the SaveMom Doctor Web Portal, the doctor is able to monitor a patient’s pregnancy remotely.
Allowear: A smart wearable device which continuously tracks activity and sleep cycles and reminds users to take medicine. Credit: SaveMom
In 18 months, the innovation has had 1,428 successful deliveries in 40 villages and identified 382 high risk mothers. The innovation was completely deployed in 40 villages in India and over 22,000 home-based antenatal check-ups have been conducted. In its first phase of deployment, SaveMom has already generated US$ 70,000 in revenue from its products and services.
Source Courtesy: https://tdr.who.int/newsroom/news/item/23-06-2021-establishment-of-new-self-financed-sihi-hub-in-india
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