Case Study 3

Title: Health ICT Intervention – Rural School Students

Main content:

Efforts to improve child health in India are solely focused on children under
five years of age. After reaching 5 years of age, children fall off the radar of
Government health programs and initiatives. Health of school children (5 to 14
years of age) is neglected and not surprisingly many children in that age group
suffer from undiagnosed health problems, malnutrition and physical and
mental stunting. Expecting good education outcomes from school children
whose health is neglected is an extremely short-sighted approach. Whatever
health awareness is created through curriculum, barely translates into
practice. The lack of awareness about health amongst parents is another major
hurdle in improving health status of school children. Health of school children
in rural areas, who are the future of India, has been neglected for years. This
has also adversely affected the educational outcomes and survival rates of
these children. Bridging this gap using innovative technologies will impact their
health and education and alter the course of their lives.

Business Problem:

A leading public health institution in India wanted to improve nutritional status

of young children in a rural district in India. The institute wanted to study the
impact that micronutrient powders sachets have in improving nutritional
status of children in primary schools in Bavla in Ahmedabad. They also wanted
to use innovative technology to create deeper understanding about good
health practices, importance of balanced diet, hygiene and warning signs of
poor health amongst students and their parents. Subsequently, the aim of the
intervention was to improve health status, reduce school absenteeism and
drop-out rates and improve educational outcomes of school children in rural
areas.

Challenges:

1. To build a tablet/mobile based platform to record the baseline and

subsequent health parameters of school children and to record the
baseline awareness about health amongst them. The platform should be
able to save data offline and also retrieve it offline.
 2. The platform should use proprietary algorithms to triage students based
on their health status and their awareness levels.
3. Based on the triage, it should engage parents of the student using a
unique IVR calling technology that should play engaging health
education content recorded in local dialects.
4. Allow the beneficiaries to give a “missed call” back to the number to
hear the audio message again. The technology should not require end-
users to have internet or smart phones.
5. The platform should have pre-loaded interactive and gamified videos
that the health-volunteer can show to school students during health
check-ups based on the age group, class of study and risk factors.

Solutions:

A multi-stakeholder meeting was organized including developers, designers,

clients and data architects to understand the scope of the project and the
intended impact of the solution. Based on the discussions, a system work-flow
was designed which outlines the functionalities and scope of the portal.

1. Database and software architecture design

2. Database architecture development
3. User interface and user experience design
4. User interface development
5. Responsive front-end development for the software
6. Back end development
7. Front end/back end/database connection
8. Quality Analysis and Issue resolutions

Technologies Used:

1. Php
2. MySql
3. JQuery
4. HTML5/CSS
5. Amazon AWS