Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) in Andhra Pradesh will now get access to regular guidelines on women and child related healthcare issues as an advanced mobile application has been launched for the purpose in the state.

Going in line with AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s vision to make Andhra Pradesh hi-tech in every aspect, the state administration and healthcare department has decided to give tablets to ASHA workers and provide mobile phones installed with the advanced software where in it will provide all the necessary guidelines relating to maternal and child healthcare issues.

ASHA workers play a key role in sensitizing women about their healthcare issues in the rural areas. In fact ASHAs are trained women community health workers instituted by the government of India's ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) in 2005. Their main role is to act as health educators and promoters in their communities. But due to lack of proper communication set up, the ASHA workers were facing lot of problems. To overcome this problem, the AP government has decided to empower the rural healthcare employees in the state.

Initially the health department of AP has decided to give away about 50 tablets, with application pre-installed. “As a part of our chief Minister’s vision to transform the healthcare landscape of AP, we have decided to empower ASHA workers who are tirelessly working in the villages providing healthcare service to rural people. The new app will enable access to latest healthcare guidelines for pregnant/lactating women and newborns,” said Kamineni Srinivas, minister for medical and health, government of AP.

The digital mobile application is a regarded as a full-fledged, easy-to-use interactive guidance system with Telugu, the regional language, as the medium of instruction to enable ASHA workers to better assist those in rural areas.

The audio-visual application further allows ASHA workers to record the health parameters of women and children and store their activities for future reference. Workers are sensitized on recognition of danger signs in pregnancy, symptoms of high-risk pregnancy, desired nutritional status, timely immunization etc among others. The workers, thus empowered, would be better-equipped to assist women and children whose conditions are poised to benefit from regular monitoring.

Kellton Tech Solutions, a Hyderabad based company played a key role in designing the advanced mobile technology.