Transcript cashv2 - MIT Media Lab

MEDIA LAB ASIA
ca:sh
Community-based, accessible &
sustainable health
Digital Nations Brunch
Nov. 28, 2001
Vishwanath Anantraman
Nathan Eagle
Vikram Sheel Kumar
ca:sh – mission statement
To build a health geographical information
system that provides medical decision
support and logistic support for maternal
and child health in rural India.
Public health system in rural India
PHC
ANM
ANM
ANM
ANM
VILLAGES
PHC: Primary Health Center
ANM: Auxiliary Nurse & Midwife
ANM
ANM
The Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife
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

The lowest node in rural
health, she travels from
house to house and visits the
PHC once/2 weeks.
She is educated and familiar
with English.
Generally 5000 patients
come under her care
A handheld-based health platform to
augment the ANM’s services



Logistic Support
 To address resource allocation problems
Medical Decision Support
 To bring greater expertise to the village-level
Behavior Modification
 As preventative medicine is the most cost-effective type
Logistic Support
An
immunization
schedule held by
an ANM in
Andhra Pradesh

Immunization scheduling
 98 % of all vaccines for the Expanded Program on
Immunization are funded by the government.
 Only 55% of 1 year old children are immunized to
measles.
Medical decision support


Pregnancy risk scoring
Growth charting


XML-based applications running on a linux
handheld
To add value to the rich data being collected
Behavior modification

Increase drug compliance
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87 % of all pregnant women in rural India are
anemic, most of which is preventable with Fe or
B12 + Folic Acid
Increase accountability of health workers
Scalability


How can we turn this project into a local
business?
Additional non-medical applications?


Dristi (gov't complaints – egovernance),
Tarahaat (ecommerce)
Existing Infrastructure

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PHO – rural ‘phone shops’ in 60% of villages
Bicycle Bandwidth?
What we are doing


Create a platform that can be dual-use:
 voice messaging
 photo sending
 GIS surveys
 photo printing
Discover what works
Team
Vishwanath Anantraman
Nathan Eagle
Reshma Khilnani
Vikram Kumar
Tarjei Mikkelsen
Advisor: Sandy Pentland