The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Product decision · 2010–2017
Dimagi's CommCare gave community health workers a configurable phone app
CommCare replaced paper registers with audio, video and SMS forms on ordinary phones, standardizing care given by India's ASHAs and scaling to eight states.
Dimagi
the move
India suffers a high maternal and infant mortality rate, especially in rural areas, where one in every 22 infants dies within a year of life. In 2010 Dimagi, with Catholic Relief Services, IntraHealth International, Real Medicine Foundation and Save the Children, deployed CommCare to help Accredited Social Health Activists improve care for pregnant women and newborns at the last mile.
CommCare uses audio, video, imagery, SMS, data and tracking forms and multiple languages to standardize service delivery, improve counseling, coordinate patients and collect real-time data for monitoring. The multimedia aids engage clients and assist low-literate workers and their patients.
Through a partnership with the Government of India and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a CommCare-based application scaled across eight Indian states to strengthen monitoring of anganwadi centers, replacing the extensive paper registers those workers were required to keep.
why it works
- Cheap phones plus configurable forms make the platform affordable for cash-strapped programs.
- Multimedia guidance lets low-literacy workers deliver consistent care.
- Real-time data replaces paper registers and enables supervision at scale.
- A form builder means programs without engineers can deploy and adapt it.
what transfers
For last-mile field work, make the tool configurable by the program, not the vendor: a form builder plus multimedia guidance lets organizations with no engineers deploy a mobile system.
what came after
CommCare became a widely used digital solution for frontline workers worldwide, and the India deployment's scale-up to eight states demonstrated that a mobile platform could replace paper in national programs.
references
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