Research

Medical Sciences

Title :	Development of a portable decision support tool for screening high risk antenatal cases at household level by community health workers
Area of research :	Medical Sciences, Life Sciences & Biotechnology
Focus area :	Electronic decision support systems for primary care providers / front line workers, Maternal and child health
Principal Investigator :	Prof Nishant Chakravorty, Assistant Professor, Medical Science & Technology, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur
Contact info :	nishant[at]smst[dot]iitkgp[dot]ac[dot]in

Details

Executive Summary :

Inadequate screening of high risk ante-natal cases and delayed referral and management attribute to large number of maternal and child deaths. This project intends to empower healthcare workers (HCW) with latest technologies and enhance affordable comprehensive primary health service to ANC. The proposed technology will enable the HCW to screen and provide well-timed referral of high risk cases for anemia, preeclampsia and gestational diabetes – major causes of preventable maternal morbidity/mortality and bridge the gaps in primary health care needs. Further, the user-friendly system intended to be developed is also expected to reduce the burden of the health-care workers by moving towards a faster and paperless data collection with easily identifiable indicators for high-risk cases. The low cost, user-friendly, semi-quantitative assessment tools developed will help in reducing subjective bias generating a huge amount of valuable data assisting policy makers to channelize their efforts more efficiently.