**(CHIP) Digital Health Census, Longitudinal Primary Health Follow-Up, and Disease Surveillance Through a Unified Mobile Platform**

#### **Hemant Sharma**

Development Lead, Udaipur, India

In a vast country like India, with a 65% rural population, it is difficult to not only track disease spread but also to share health awareness and state-specific guidelines. Screening, testing, contact tracing, and quarantining are especially difficult in areas with low literacy and sociodemographic barriers.

Further, the current data collection system is paper-based, and communication is established as a hierarchy,

from the block to the district to the state. This data are shared via Excel sheets, so it remains difficult to obtain information in real-time and take action in a timely manner. Khushi Baby's CHIP platform is not only disrupting this paper-based tracking system but also digitally empowering Community Health Workers (CHWs). It includes a complete authenticated digital health census through door-to-door surveys by CHWs in Rajasthan. The USP of the platform includes:


Post the platform's launch in July 2020, more than 63,000 Community Health Workers used it to screen more than 14 million residents with 94,000 referrals and 31,000+ follow-ups. The Government of India recognized the platform as a finalist in the Strengthening COWIN Grand Challenge in May 2021.

In the last two months since the relaunch, an additional 3 million residents have been enrolled through the digital health census, and had their social determinants of health, reported health conditions, and COVID-19 vaccination status updated through CHIP. Given our ongoing role as the Nodal Technical Support Partner in Rajasthan and the integration of our platforms within the state's health infrastructure, we are well poised to meaningfully continue to contribute to pandemic preparedness in India.

Hemant Sharma

Development Lead, Udaipur, India

#### Problem Statement

India has the world's largest public health workforce, with over 1M ASHAs (village health volunteers) working under India's National 250K ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives), women in their 20s to 40s, caring for over 900M residents living in rural communities. Time saved from paper-based and fragmented digital reporting could be used to serve over 20M more beneficiaries on a monthly basis, to generate an accurate population denominator, to ensure longitudinal care follow-up, and to identify the community spread of disease easily.

#### Solution

Khushi Baby looks to address the above challenges with CHIP ("Community Health Integrated Platform"), a digital public health system, which is currently being scaled across Rajasthan, India's biggest state.

CHIP includes offine-ready m-health applications for the three key health workers of the Indian public health system: the ASHA (village health volunteers), the ANM (nurse, who visits the community once a month for preventative checkups), and the Medical Officer (who cares for high-risk patients).

These mobile applications capture the entire work requirement of each respective health worker, across all primary health care programs. This streamlines data collection, report generation, and payment automation. These mobile applications are also inter-linked, allowing longitudinal beneficiary data for informed care to be shared. Using the platform, health workers will be able to perform the following core activities from their smartphone:

1.A digital health census to capture the true population denominator (which has been a challenge) and community health need;

2.Longitudinal follow-up of primary health care across program verticals (e.g., family planning, maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, tuberculosis);

3.Disease outbreak surveillance for COVID-19 and other emerging infectious diseases (including symptom-screenings, referrals, and vaccination follow-up).

This platform also digitally empowers health officials with AI and GIS-based dashboards to a) monitor and respond to community needs in real time, b) monitor and respond to healthcare performance in real time, and c) automate personalized community engagement for health workers and beneficiaries.
