How digital record keeping is strengthening community health care in India

When Leela first experienced dizziness, she took a 10-minute break and resumed harvesting crops in the fields for six more hours until she collapsed. The dizzy spells continued for over a week until community health care worker Bhomitra Sutar examined her. “Looking at her eyes, I understood something was wrong,” Sutar said. Blood tests revealed she was severely anemic. By this time, Leela, a farmworker in Loyra village, in northwestern India’s Rajasthan state — who prefers using her first name to protect her privacy — was two months pregnant. Sutar referred her to the nearby Bargaon Community Health Center for intravenous iron sucrose treatment. “I knew she wouldn’t go easily because missing even a day’s work could cost her a lot.” She entered her pregnancy details and hemoglobin levels in a mobile application called Khushi Baby. It has several subcategories for recording details such as the last menstrual period for pregnant women, hemoglobin levels, blood pressure, and much more. Upon filling out the details, the app immediately flagged Leela as a high-risk case needing urgent care. Sutar’s supervisors could also view this information on the app’s dashboard. Khushi Baby addresses health care gaps by using digital records to track maternal and child health, focusing on malnutrition, anemia, and vaccination coverage. Community health care workers use the mobile application to record and monitor health data, ensuring timely intervention for high-risk cases. The application provides them with real-time information and helps overcome challenges by quickly identifying maternal anemia, missed child vaccinations, and other cases. Keep reading: Join Devex on the ground in India as we explore Kushi Baby’s efforts to digitize record keeping in this visual story. This story is part of a Devex series on what’s working in global health. These are editorially independent articles, supported with funding from the Gates Foundation. Through this reporting, Devex will cover global health successes, exploring how these responses worked, what challenges they encountered, as well as key lessons and insights. To get in touch about the series, including pitches for us to consider, email editor@devex.com.