Mobile VAS takes healthcare information to Bihar villages

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-sponsored project use mobile applications to convey health messages to pregnant women, train health workers

tna October 11, 2012, 19:10 IST

A public-private partnership healthcare initiative in launched in Bihar by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation shows that how technology can leveraged to improve the healthcare system in rural areas.

The project, 'Ananya’ has leveraged the power of mobile value added services to communicate life-saving health messages to pregnant women and mothers, and also to offer training to health workers via their mobile phones.

Developed by Bangalore-based mobile value added services provider OnMobile, the two services – Mobile Kunji and Mobile Academy – have been launched in eight districts of Bihar initially and would be gradually rolled out to the rest of the districts, according to the Foundation.

Both the services aim at empowering the frontline community health workers in the state. ‘Mobile Kunji’ offers life-saving health messages to expected mothers and mothers on topics of maternity and child-care. Each of those messages is accessed dialing toll-free short codes from the mobile phones of community health workers who then play it before the targeted audience. The messages that use the local idiom are conversational in tone.

‘Mobile Academy,’ the audio training course for community health workers is meant to refresh their knowledge of life-saving health behaviours.

The course of 190 minutes duration is delivered to them via mobile phone with just Rs 80 for the full course. 

The Foundation has partnered with five major telecom operators in Bihar including Airtel, Idea, Tata, Reliance and Vodafone to launch the services. These telecom operators have agreed to reduce their standard IVR tariffs by 90 per cent to make these services affordable.

“With the help of our implementing partner, BBC Media Action, we did a few surveys in the state which reaffirmed our belief that mobile phone could be the best medium to reach out rural women. We found that 80 per cent of rural women in the state have access to mobile phones whereas only 25 per cent of them have access television and radio,” said Anand Sinha, senior programme officer at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bihar has about 200,000 community health workers of which 40,000 have already covered through these initiatives.

“These innovations are not just about technology; they are about touching lives,” said Priyanka Dutt, Project Director, BBC Media Action.

“These services can have a significant impact on people’s lives at an unprecedented scale, and the public-private partnership model that makes them affordable and sustainable,” she added.

‘Ananya’ project which aims at accelerating in improvements in health, nutrition and sanitation was launched in 2011 based on a memorandum of cooperation between Government of Bihar and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation has committed an investment of $122 million for this five-year programme which will gradually cover all the 38 districts of Bihar.