mHealth

Digital transformation through mHealth

Digitisation of community based health services is a priority for BRAC. In order to achieve this goal, BRAC has trained 4,500 community health workers (CHW) to use digital devices and maintain digital patient records through the mHealth platform.

mHealth platform provides a digital solution for BRAC CHWs and facilities, e.g. - BRAC Maternity Centers and Vision Centers. It is built on a robust open source platform, OpenSRP, developed by mPower Social Enterprises Ltd. The platform currently caters to more than 5000 frontline health workers through android application, locally installed offline-supported EMR and an integrated web-portal for management and data visualisation.

The solution is used by around 4300 CHWs and 500 Project Assistants across Bangladesh and also used to collect incoming data from 43,000 community based health volunteers. Currently through our CHWs this solution caters to more than 18 million households reaching a population of 75 million.

IMPACT

BRAC HNPP

5000

frontline health workers currently use this application and are able to provide better health services utilising this platform
BRAC HNPP

620

BRAC offices across Bangladesh using the platform for reporting, monitoring, and decision-making.
BRAC HNPP

75 million

people in 18 million households across rural communities and urban slums registered in the platform.

KEY FEATURES

  • Registers households and members with unique ID
  • Record longitudinal health data of each member taking service from BRAC health points (Shasthya Kormi, Programme Assistant and BRAC facilities)
  • Integrated solution connecting communities to facilities ensuring no interruption of the flow of data
  • Identifying pregnant mothers-at-risk through pre-defined algorithm in the platform
  • Triggered referral to nearby health centers in case of complex cases
  • System integrated personalised counseling based on predefined logics
  • Health check-ups for pregnant and postpartum mothers, neonatal and child counseling for children under 5 years of age, adolescent counseling, non-communicable disease (NCD) and eye-disease screening for adults
  • An integrated digital financial system for direct and reconciliation free payment management
  • Inventory solution to manage branch and facility inventory
  • Household and member migration solution for handling rapid migration events in Bangladesh
  • Aggregated and granular reporting mechanism for managers. Allowing them to take informed decisions and track the performance of CHWs
BRAC HNPP

How mHealth helps

BRAC HNPP
  • A member is registered only once in the system and provided with a unique ID, through which all the data collected in this system is sorted. As a result, a patient can be longitudinally tracked and provided with quality services.
  • Time saved due to automated reporting mechanism
  • Leaders and decision makers do not have to wait for month-end reports and real-time decisions can be taken
  • A change/update in system takes a few seconds to be applied through application update process
  • System can generate risk flags, counseling messages and trigger referral ensuring quality treatment in critical cases
  • Field managers can track CHW’s performance in real-time and monitor their activities
  • Integrated facility and community solution ensure one-time registration for a service point and no loss of service data
  • Migration also ensures one-time registration for a service point and no loss of service data