During 2016, the Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi launched Umeed-e-Nau, a project aimed at improving maternal, child and adolescent health in Pakistan. Umeed-e-Nau, meaning ‘new hope’ in the local Urdu language, is research project aims to test various approaches to develop insights and evidence around maternal, child and adolescent health care to influence policy. Under the leadership of Dr Zulfiqar Bhutta, Director, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Division of Woman and Child Health and Founding Chair, Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, the project will develop public-private partnerships (PPP) to deliver proven interventions in efforts to improve the quality health care in 14 health facilities in rural districts of Balochistan, Southern Punjab, Sindh provinces of Pakistan and in urban slums of the city of Karachi.
For the project, AKDN dHRC is developing innovative digital health solutions for the – a mobile application and a Learning Management System (LMS). The Umeed-e-Nau application is an Android-based application with a web portal based on District Health Information Software version 2 (DHIS2) architecture customized with image processing. The application aims to improve the health information management system by digitizing the process of data compilation and health facility reports.
At the rural health facility, physician manually develops paper-based records for reporting to the District Headquarters (DHQ) hospitals. The AKU team visits the rural facility and captures a photograph of these paper-based reports via the app. Through the defined, intelligent algorithms within the app, data entries are counted and reports are generated automatically. The reports and other data entries are synchronized with the central server and accessible via the Umeed-e-Nau web portal.
The Umeed-e-Nau LMS is a capacity building, web-based application, which can also act as a native application. The application ensures the availability of teaching modules and other course content used by the AKU physicians during the sessions conducted in rural health facilities in Balochistan, Southern Punjab and Sindh. The LMS enables physicians at the rural health facility to access the content prior to the in-class sessions in order to take full advantage.
The Umeed-e-Nau mobile application and LMS are currently under development. Plans are to roll-out the applications in the first quarter of 2020.
The five-year project is funded by a USD 25 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.