Nadda Rolls Out Four Mobile-Health Initiatives
15 January, New Delhi
Union Health Minister J P Nadda today launched four mobile health (mHealth) services in line with the Governments commitment to prioritise public health and strengthen citizen-centric health services by leveraging Indias expanding mobile phone penetration.
”The m-health initiatives will enhance access; make our services cost effective and our systems more robust,” said Nadda.
Terming as a ”game changer in health communications” the four initiatives Kilkari, Mobile Academy, M-Cessation and TB Missed Call — which are part of the Governments Digital India programme, he expressed confidence that these initiatives would ”bring us closer to people who need our services the most”.
He stated that in keeping with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a ‘Digital India’ based on harnessing technology for the benefit of people, the OPD registration at AIIMS, New Delhi had been made online to cut waiting time of a large section of people from about six hours to about one hour.
Kilkari, which means a babys gurgle, delivers free, weekly, time-appropriate 72 audio messages about pregnancy, child birth and child care directly to families mobile phones from the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is one year old. Kilakri is being rolled out in Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and high priority districts (HPDs) of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in the first phase