CallAunty is an app which allows expectant mothers to call-in to determine if they are high risk and receive care. One of the Top 10 Hacks for Devs Without Borders' Break Inequality Hackathon 2016.
Pregnant women in rural Bangladesh lack access to the appropriate healthcare services required to have a successful and healthy pregnancy. Without reliable access to well-trained healthcare professionals, women in higher-risk pregnancies can experience higher mortality rates due to delayed care, lack of care, and misinformation. After speaking with Plan Canada to gain an understanding of the health workers’ usage of data and the ways they currently gather this information, we learned the gaps in their process. Currently, community health workers do risk assessments during appointments but can’t interpret this information into recommendations on their own. Instead, this information must travel back to their office and be communicated to medical professionals for interpretation. This causes delays in communication and the creation of important care plans. Information can get lost along the way and takes too long to make an impact for these women. Meanwhile, women have poor access to accurate health information and may proceed with their pregnancy with misinformation that can be dangerous. They also have limited access to health care workers throughout their pregnancy. In order to tackle this issue we looked at developing a more efficient process for the community health workers that are at the forefront of aiding these women, and created a process that empowers them to plan for their pregnancies without giving up their cultural practices.
Our solution is “Call Aunty”! This is a two part program that targets both the community health worker (CHW) as well as the pregnant women (let’s call her Aisha) living in rural Bangladesh. The Call Aunty process starts with a call from Aisha, initially with the help of her CHW during their first appointment. At this point Aisha meets Aunty who asks her a few personal and health related questions to register her into the Call Aunty service. At the end of this call Aunty automatically determines Aisha’s risk level, her estimated due date and gives a brief, tailored recommendation based on the information given. The CHW sees the results of Aisha’s answers on her app as well as the recommendation given by Aunty. Based on Aisha’s risk level, Call Aunty schedules automated check-in calls to get updates on any symptoms and revise Aisha’s risk level and recommendations throughout her pregnancy. Our goal is to reduce the number of CHW visits needed for low-risk women so that these workers can focus on higher-risk women.
The website can be accessed at http://03ed01b5.ngrok.io/ (Note: As of 2017, project is currently not online.)
For the automated response with various survey questions: +1 226-242-0767
An alternate number for next steps via text message: +1 226-242-2127
Positioning Statement Call Aunty is a free, high quality support system for pregnant women living in rural Bangladesh, that provides them with information and resources to help them actively plan for their pregnancies, in a comfortable and culturally acceptable setting
Slogan: “Have you called Aunty Yet?”