Empowering High-Risk Pregnant Women: A Digital Health Intervention Pilot in Urban and Rural Settings

[Vanshikabhatotia]

Description

ARMMAN is planning a pilot project in select government hospitals in Mumbai to empower and support pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies. While only 20-30% of pregnancies can be classified as high risk, they account for 70-80% of maternal and neonatal deaths. Empowering these pregnant women with targeted preventive care information and hand-holding can help them look after themselves better and anticipate problems and seek care early, thereby reducing the chances of severe complications, including death.

Pilot participants will receive targeted information about their high-risk conditions via WhatsApp, along with additional digital and call-based hand-holding support for better management of these conditions. We will launch the pilot in June 2024 with a focus on anemia, with plans to subsequently add more pregnancy risk factors. We will also expand the pilot to rural settings later in the year.

Prior to designing our pilot product, we conducted interviews with a large number of women with high-risk pregnancies in government hospitals in Mumbai. Our interviews highlighted limited information-seeking behaviour from participants across backgrounds and education levels. With the focus of the health system being on diagnosis and medication, doctors and hospitals provide limited information about danger signs, side effects of medication & importance of adherence, diet & exercise, etc. Adherence to medication and self-care regimens varied widely, with poor to moderate adherence for diet and exercise recommendations. Many women also reported experiencing strong feelings of anxiety and helplessness about their high-risk conditions.

We would like the contributor to help gather insights into the developed WhatsApp product, create user personas via field research and use these to inform the design for the product in rural settings and for additional high risk conditions.

Key design-research questions

• Understand the usage of the high risk WhatsApp product by pregnant women, including what worked well and what needs to be improved
• Understand and create the key personas for users of this product in the urban setting
• Determine the changes that need to be made to expand the product to a rural setting
• Determine the changes that need to be made to expand it to additional risk factors like hypertension and diabetes
• Identify best practices that can be used for digital handholding using two-way communication via LLMs

Current State

Enrolment of women with high-risk pregnancies has already started in 3 government hospitals in Mumbai, with the WhatsApp product expected to be launched in June. The current design is limited to only urban women with moderate and severe anemia. The pilot product is a Minimum Viable Product based on findings from our first round of user research.

Pilot participants will receive regular antenatal care messages in Hindi or Marathi, as well as additional targeted messages based on their high-risk condition from the time of enrolment till delivery for 8 weeks. They will also receive hand-holding via WhatsApp (through chatbots) as well as call centre / hospital supervisors of ARMMAN’s High Risk Tracking program.

Desired State

The overall objectives of the pilot are as follows:

• Generate preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of targeted information and various hand-holding mechanisms (digital + call centre) in managing high-risk conditions
• Validate acceptability, likeability and usefulness of targeted information about high-risk factors sent via WhatsApp
• Inform the design of a scalable, technology-based high-risk offering within our larger m-health program, Kilkari

Later in 2024, we plan to add two additional pregnancy high-risk factors, and expand the pilot to a rural setting as well, thus reaching a different audience. We expect digital literacy levels to be different for rural users, requiring a slightly modified product experience.

Goals & Mid-Point Milestone

• Gather insights from product implementation on usability and effectiveness (mid-point)
• Develop persona mapping for users of the product (mid-point)
• Create prototype or low fidelity design for the program in a rural setting
• Create prototypes for additional conditions like hypertension and diabetes
• Recommend best practices for digital hand holding for users

Acceptance Criteria

• Detailed report with user research findings and insights
• Design recommendations for a rural product and for a product with expanded scope of high-risk conditions, with validated mock-ups or prototypes wherever applicable

Existing Mockups/Wireframes

No response

Product Name

Armman

Organisation Name

Armman

Domain

⁠Healthcare

Mentor(s)

@TejalTM @kaaveyatm

[babitarit]

@Vanshikabhatotia i wanted to discuss on this issue and start contribution in it.how i can contact u?

[Riyasharma28]

Respected Mentor I'm a Full Stack Developer proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MongoDB, React.js, Node.js, Bootstrap, Database Management, UI/UX Design, Test-driven Development, and frameworks like Laravel and Material-UI. With over 10 projects completed in similar domains, I'm eager to contribute my expertise to your project. I'm excited about the opportunity to collaborate and drive its success. Looking forward to discussing this further