MEDIA LAB ASIA

ca:shCommunity-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 ANMANM

VILLAGES

PHC: Primary Health CenterANM: Auxiliary Nurse & Midwife

The Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife

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

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.

An immunization schedule held by an ANM in Andhra Pradesh

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 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

PHO – rural ‘phone shops’ in 60% of villages Bicycle Bandwidth?

What we are doing

Create a platform that can be dual-use:voice messagingphoto sendingGIS surveysphoto printing

Discover what works

Team

Vishwanath Anantraman

Nathan Eagle

Reshma Khilnani

Vikram Kumar

Tarjei Mikkelsen

Advisor: Sandy Pentland