Technology
that helps safeguard our little ones
India sees
over two million kids die every year, and a million more disabled for life.
Reason: Kids not being vaccinated in time. Project Khushi steps in to the rescue by
integrating mobile health, NFC technology, and cloud computing.
An Immunize India report reveals that the
neonatal mortality rate (death within the first month of the child’s birth) in
India is 27.7 per 1000 live births. The global average stands at 19. In
addition to our disconcerting stats, we have to battle with the fact that the current
data collection methods are outdated, cumbersome, and lack specific patient
information.
A Silver Lining
A
non-profit organization, Khushi Project,
is harnessing technology to give these kids a shot at a healthy life. The project has integrated wearable
NFC technology, mobility, and cloud computing under one roof to fix the
vaccination problem.
The
project bagged the UNICEF ‘Wearable for Good’ challenge, following which,
UNICEF is considering using the technology to benefit a larger base beyond India. So
far, the system has tracked about 16,000 vaccination events for 1500 children
in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Project Khushi is currently working in 60 villages with
an NGO called Seva Mandir. This technology will be rolled out in 400 more
villages, and the data collected will be compared directly with the government
status quo mechanism.
The
tracking system involves a rewritable NFC pendant, which uses the N-Tag 216
chip that can be worn around the neck. The chip has re-writable memory, and
this makes it a valuable record in the size of a paper stamp. The
device draws power from a phone or a tablet, using near frequency to
temporarily activate the chip by induction. These chips are password protected
on read and write. So, you can program it such that only your app can edit/read
this chip after the first time you write on it. What
the project is trying to achieve is to straighten out the manner in which data
is stored. And that’s where the Mamta card steps in (maternal and child
healthcare card for pregnant women through the first year of the child’s life
and immunization records).
The challenge Khushi faced was in storage – reducing the
number of bytes they were taking up (government records contain 120 columns of
data), and this compelled the team to think out of the box. The team needed to
record the dates that immunizations were given on. Now, instead of recording
every single date for every single vaccine, they have an offset date from a reference
date, which is usually the date of birth, or the date of registration.
Cloud to the
rescue
The data is stored in three
places – starting with the highest level of severity.
First is the necklace,
which is the patient’s copy of the record. So, that is considered to be the
most recent updated information. The second level is what is stored in the mobile
device/tablet, on its local memory. And finally, the data is also stored on the
cloud. Most other mobile health-type applications have the latter two – on the
local device, and the cloud.
But, as long as they have the app, and as long as they are in
possession of that pendant, they can still retrieve that data and act upon it.
And the paradigm here is that it’s truly decentralized, instead of relying on
pulling data from the cloud, or look up identifiers in a centralized location,
or backed-up data on a tablet.
how secure is the data?
Security starts right at the field. “You need to have an
authorized user working on the apps, otherwise the data could be manipulated.
The tag itself has to be protected. The connection over which you’re sending
the data from the tablet to the cloud needs to be secure, and finally the cloud
itself needs to be secure,” says Nagar.
