By: M. Sai Gopal
4,900 tablets were distributed to Auxiliary Nurse Midwives to maintain records pertaining to pregnant women and infants born in State-run hospitals
In a move towards digitising patient records, especially vital health data pertaining to pregnant women and infants born in State-run hospitals, health authorities here had recently equipped field level heath care workers with tablets. The supply of 4,900 tablets to Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), a project spearheaded by National Health Mission (NHM) in the State, has essentially shifted the work of field level health workers from noting down health data in registers to collecting data and inputting the same in a digital tablet.
Incidentally, Telangana has become the second State, after Andhra Pradesh, in South India to adopt such an online system that enables ANMs to collect data in digital format. Till recently, ANMs, with each typically covering anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 persons, used to carry five to six registers during their field visits for recording health parameters. Now, they are collecting the health data of pregnant women and infants and uploading the information to a web-based portal through the tablets.
The data collected by the ANMs is being uploaded onto a web-based tracking system known as Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS). The MCTS is designed to facilitate and track timely delivery of antenatal and postnatal care services of all pregnant women and immunisation of all the children. The tablets to ANMs and MCTS systems are eventually going to play a vital role in efficient implementation of KCR Kits and ‘Amma Odi’ scheme, in which funds worth Rs 12,000 will be directly transferred to individual bank accounts of each pregnant women.
“We have implemented the digitisation of records project and KCR kits on a pilot basis in Mahbubnagar. Through MCTS, we tracked pregnant women and children and made sure beneficiary receives funds directly without duplication. The process is also quick and efficient,” NHM officials in Telangana said. A lot depends on the integrity of the data that is collected and later fed into the MCTS system by the ANMs. To address the issue of quality of data that is generated, officials said that ANMs underwent a series of training workshops on collecting data and feeding the same into tablets properly. Once the data is uploaded to the MCTS website by ANMs, the portal will automatically track the individual beneficiary throughout the reproductive lifecycle. The MCTS portal has been designed to support reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health schemes.
Source: Telangana Today