Researchers from the University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Public Health have developed an application for midwives and cadres with the aim of improving access to and quality of maternal and child health services.
According to a recent press release, mHealth is an Android-based Open Data Kit (ODK) data collection application platform, which aims to assist midwives and cadres in collecting data in their field of work.
About mHealth
- The mHealth application can help improve health services by gathering information about the demographic and health conditions of the population.
- In addition, it is capable of producing an appropriate information system for monitoring health as well as community and regional demographics.
- This information system will not only serve as a way to monitor health but will also contribute to assisting decision-makers for strategic policy.
- mHealth is an all-around application that can be used for routine health programs, for monitoring and evaluation, for decision-making, as well as for improving maternal and child health programs.
- A two-day training activity was held for midwives and cadres, wherein they were taught how to use the mHealth app.
- Testing of the app was then scheduled in all villages in Babakan Madang Sub-District after the training.
The Problem
The health sector is still facing problems in the quality and availability of data, which hinders them from producing appropriate solutions and interventions.
As such, there are no timely and sustainable data available, which will monitor the health status of mothers and their children.
The absence of an adequate and sustainable monitoring system has implications such as low quality of information on demographic and health issues in the village, sub-district and district levels.
Benefits of the App
- Hopefully, the use of the mHealth application will play a role in improving the quality of data on both maternal and child health services because this will support strategic policy-making.
- The ultimate aim is to improve the quality of and access to maternal and child health services.
- Having the correct data on health measurements is halfway to solving health problems.
- By knowing the health data on high morbidity and mortality rates, which are major public health problems, decision-makers can discuss and plan for ways to address the problems.
- The mHealth application will provide health and demographic monitoring, which will be complemented by mobile data collection technology.
- The application will be used mainly by midwives and cadres, who will serve as the data collectors and managers of health programs. They will be responsible for the regional health demographic.
- Hopefully, this application will be implemented and included in community service activities. Health workers will be involved and will be able to monitor routinely.
- Doing so will definitely improve the quality of data on mothers, newborns and toddlers in the community.
