The interviews and reporting for this story have been carried out in July 2023.

Antenatal care is designed to make being pregnant safer for ladies by detecting problems early and guaranteeing well timed remedy. At the very least 4 antenatal care visits are really helpful to observe the well being of the pregnant lady and her fetus.

In rural areas, about 54 % of moms attend the really helpful visits, in comparison with 68.1 % in city areas. This means that roughly half of pregnant girls in rural areas don’t go to hospitals for the suggested care.

Consequently, these problems considerably influence girls’s lives. In India, there have been 97 maternal deaths per 1,00,000 dwell births reported between 2018–20.

“One of many main causes behind such deaths is that ladies keep away from going to far-off healthcare centres for routine checkups. The problems, if any, stay ignored,” Tamil Nadu-based Senthil Kumar Murugesan tells The Higher India.

“Excessive-risk moms are normally recognized within the third trimester, which is across the eighth month of being pregnant. Nevertheless, by this time, it’s typically too late to successfully handle problems earlier than labour. This will result in deadly outcomes. At the moment, all data are maintained on paper, and if mortality happens, the rationale behind the loss of life stays unknown. There are not any data-based analyses out there,” provides the 33-year-old.

An electronics and communications engineer by career, Senthil labored with corporations like Samsung and Qualcomm for seven years. However to handle this hole, in 2019, he began JioVio Healthcare, an IoT-based maternal healthcare startup that gives early threat monitoring providers at residence.

“We developed an AI instrument that may predict high-risk pregnancies within the second trimester. This helps the ladies get early physician’s suggestions if any adjustments are wanted in diet, sleep cycle, and so on. Our objective is to transform high-risk pregnancies into low-risk ones by guaranteeing the well timed provision of medicine and correct diet,” he shares.

Senthil informs that since 2019, the startup has catered to greater than 30 lakh moms from 14,328 villages in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala. By means of a 1,000-day care programme, he has additionally helped no less than 7,320 high-risk pregnant girls to date.

From sister’s wrestle to lifesaving innovation for rural girls

He first got here throughout the being pregnant healthcare hole when his sister was pregnant in 2016. “She is a career-driven lady and would miss her antenatal appointments because of the lack of time. Additionally, the space from her village to the hospital is much,” says the Madurai resident.

His concern for her drove him to develop a prototype of a tool that might monitor one’s vitals like blood glucose and blood stress. “I needed to verify my sister doesn’t go into the labour room with any problems,” he says.

“This expertise made me realise that ladies face important challenges when visiting hospitals for antenatal care. The lengthy journey instances and ready intervals of 5 to 6 hours for a brief session lead many ladies to keep away from these visits and postpone them to the following month. Nevertheless, this delay prevents potential dangers from being assessed in a well timed method. I grew to become conscious of the alarming mortality charges amongst tribal and rural pregnant girls and felt decided to discover a resolution,” he provides.

So after making a easy gadget for his sister, Senthil felt impressed to help extra girls, significantly these in rural and distant areas. His goal was to assist them monitor important vitals normally recorded throughout antenatal visits.

After three years of scientific trials, he based JioVio Healthcare in 2019.

Monitoring vitals in a single gadget

Explaining the method of reaching out to rural girls, Senthil says, “We work with the state governments. After contacting them, the secretaries inform us in regards to the districts with excessive maternal mortality. We then method the district collector, who onboards block-level officers, healthcare staff, and rural girls. When any of the agricultural girls get pregnant, a cell utility is used to trace their well being and conduct month-to-month checkups.”

“We give our medical gadget referred to as AlloTricorder to healthcare staff. They use it to measure important parameters like blood stress, blood glucose, ECG, and temperature — all utilizing a single gadget. They then digitally switch the information by way of Bluetooth to the applying,” he says.

“The information collected at hospitals is identical as what we seize at residence. Our thought was to collect this knowledge proper on the affected person’s residence. If lab assessments are mandatory, we acquire the samples from their properties,” he provides.

Senthil says, “Our gadget is exclusive as different instruments out there available in the market are primarily for foetal monitoring. Nevertheless, we nonetheless advocate that ladies go to the hospital each month, the place the physician can evaluate the month-to-month knowledge and prescribe medicine accordingly,” he says.

To this point, he has onboarded 15,000 healthcare staff and a pair of,500 docs.

A novel wearable for high-risk moms

Senthil additionally created a sensible wearable gadget referred to as Allowear, designed for high-risk pregnant girls who want steady monitoring.

He says that this battery-operated gadget tracks their sleep cycle, energy burned (indicating dietary deficiencies), pulse fee, and steps. It additionally sends well timed reminders for taking medicines. ASHA (Accredited Social Well being Activist) staff can retrieve the recorded well being knowledge by way of Bluetooth and add it to the cloud, the place docs can entry it for evaluate, he informs.

Senthil explains a state of affairs the place such gadgets are helpful. “If a high-risk mom has hypertension, docs additionally contemplate her sleep sample. If she isn’t getting correct sleep, it could actually contribute to elevated blood stress. In such circumstances, the physician might prescribe totally different medicines as a substitute of a typical blood stress pill.”

The information is collected weekly and reviewed by a physician each 15 days. Excessive-risk moms are really helpful to make use of the wearable gadget for 1,000 days — ranging from the fourth week of being pregnant till the infant’s second birthday.

The associated fee for this service is just Re 1 per day, lined by the federal government. Senthil says that their annual income is about Rs 1.5 crore.

Commenting on how helpful the gadgets are, Madurai-based Dr S Karthikeyan, who has been practising medication for 13 years, tells The Higher India, “We’ve got seen that a variety of pregnant girls don’t deal with themselves which causes dietary deficiencies amongst them. This adjustments their blood glucose and stress, and ECG.”

“With these gadgets, we’re in a position to perceive the issues and alert native healthcare staff. Accordingly, we’re additionally in a position to prescribe iron dietary supplements, folic acid tablets, and different diet dietary supplements to the ladies. I can monitor their well being by sitting in my OPD. We’ve got been in a position to save tons of of lives thanks to those gadgets. They’ve an enormous potential to scale back the maternal mortality fee in India,” he provides.

Senthil claims that he has been in a position to scale back maternal mortality by 10 % within the areas he has labored. For him, the influence of the work is extraordinarily satisfying.

“After 5 years into any company job, the work is just about the identical. I selected entrepreneurship as a result of it provides me extra studying alternatives. As an alternative of working in a giant Fortune 500 firm, this work provides me immense gratification. It’s fulfilling to see we’re in a position to save lives with our gadgets,” he shares.

Senthil shares that he now intends to broaden their providers in North and Northeast India.

Sources: 

‘Nationwide Household Well being Survey (NFHS-5) 2019-21’: by Ministry of Well being & Household Welfare, Authorities of India

‘Important Decline in Maternal Mortality in India’: by Press Data Bureau, Printed on 14 December 2022