Nadda launches IT-enabled tools to make health hi-tech

Shri J P Nadda, Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare announced four new IT-based initiatives on Good Governance Day, to mark the birth anniversary of Bharat Ratna Shri Madan Mohan Malaviya and birthday of Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, here. He was speaking at the launch of the AIIMS OPD Transformation Project which envisages the use of IT to provide ease to patients and citizens while accessing services at AIIMS. This is being supported by the Tata Consultancy services as part of their CSR initiative.

Enumerating the first of the initiatives, the Health Minister announced 'Kilkari'. A major IT initiative, Kilkari is an audio-based mobile service that delivers weekly audio messages to families about pregnancy, child birth and child care. Each pregnant woman and infant's mother, registered in Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), a web- enabled name-based system to monitor and ensure delivery of full spectrum of services to all pregnant women and children, would receive weekly voice messages relevant to the stage of pregnancy or age of the infant. The 72 messages would reach the targeted beneficiaries from the 4th month of pregnancy until the child is one year old. On an average, the duration of each message is two minutes. Such messages will empower and educate women and parents to help create a better environment in maternal and child health. This service will be provided free to the beneficiaries. In the first phase of implementation, such messages would be sent to the pregnant women and infants' mothers in six States in Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and HPDs of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. They are being developed in Hindi, English and Odiya languages in the first phase, to be later expanded to other languages to cover the entire country and would benefit over 2 crore pregnant women and 2 crore infants, annually.