A novel mobile application to assist maternal health workers in rural India

The philosophy and architecture of a novel mobile application to support maternal health are presented in this paper. A deployment study presents evidence on the benefits derived by the use of mobile devices for treatment adherence and compliance and care management. The application is intended for usage by rural caregivers for timely pregnancy related information management and to give relevant pregnancy and child care related advices. Automated advisory to help determine the risk condition of pregnancy and suggested treatment courses are handled by an expert system in the application. Much of the advisory rules run on the edge device right at the point of data collection and the dependency on network availability is negligible. The application also demands minimal medical expertise on the part of the caregivers, so early assistance can be provided even before a trained medical practitioner is made available to the patient.