The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Automation of pregnancy monitoring system boon to village health nurses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 08, 2010
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Automation of pregnancy monitoring system boon to village health nurses

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Automation of Pregnancy and Infancy Cohort Monitoring system would help save time for village health nurses to attend to more patients, nurses at a workshop on a real-time bio-surveillance programme suggested.

Organised at the IIT-Madras Research Park on Wednesday, the workshop evaluated the progress of the Real-Time Bio-Surveillance Programme (RTBP) pilot project launched in Sivaganga district to automate data collection at the Health Sub-Centre (HSC) level.

Palaniayee, a Village Health Nurse in Tirupattur block where the pilot project was run, says she spends a significant amount of time maintaining records of her patients.

“We have to enter all the details in eight registers and maintain them over the course of a year or two,” she says.

Already trained in the use of the mobile technology developed by Rural Technology Business Incubator of IIT-M in collaboration with LIRNEasia and Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Palaniayee now wants more from the system.

“The normal process used by the State government takes 15-30 days before it reaches the Director Public Health and there is lots of manual processing. The new system simplifies and helps both the Village Health Nurse in her everyday work and the Health authorities in their policy-related directions,” said Suma Prashanth, vice-president, Exploratory Initiatives, RTBI, briefing the press on the pilot project.

K. Vijayaraghavan, director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, said the data collected from the present pilot study could be used for biological research.

“This can then be fed back to the health system in the country as doctors can use the new knowledge back on the field,” he said.

The technology can also be used in any other field-level data collection and data processing, said Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor, IIT-Madras. “We are already looking at using this system in evaluating how well Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is being implemented. The same can be used in monitoring agriculture and water use. It is a question of using technology to simplify cumbersome processes,” he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu