mHealth:
Indonesia
World Vision Indonesia is piloting an
mHealth intervention using the CommCare
platform to strengthen the community-based
health/nutrition program in Indonesia. The
mHealth solution aims to improve the
quality of Posyandu (a nationwide
community-based integrated health/nutrition
program) with the goal to improve nutrition
outcomes for mothers and children. The
application is designed to support growth
monitoring and promotion services by
helping community health workers (CHWs)
to record and track the care delivered to
women and children. The core functions of
the application are outlined below.
Functions
Description
Nutrition
surveillance (Input
weight & interpret
undernutrition, or
overweight)
Calculation of z-score (Weight for Height, Weight for age, Height for age) and
identification of current nutritional status. If child is under/overweight or is not
attaining optimal growth velocity on consecutive visits, application will provide
an automatic message for appropriate referral/follow up actions. It provides
reminders/steps taking accurate anthropometry through diagrams and messages.
Client education and
behaviour change
communication
Tailored specific messages based on the assessment of feeding practices inputted
by CHWs in the phones; Visual media (picture and video) (e.g. breastfeeding
attachment) to help delivering the messages; Automatic reminders scheduled for
child follow-up and to alert CHWs when there is lost-to-follow-up; Referral
notifications attached to individual patient records, allowing data on treatment
adherence and symptoms to be viewed by multiple CHWs along the continuum
CHWs performance
tracking
Web-based dashboards allow supervisors to track the performance of CHWs
individually or at the district/provincial/national level by noting the volume of
digital productivity of workers as they perform their field activities
Data collection &
reporting
Generate summary data at the server and at all levels - lowest level being health
unit/village and highest being country-level aggregate data. Automatic graphs and
summary reports will also be generated to make data analysis quicker and
easier.
mHealth: Indonesia
Background
Indonesia’s current system for community-based child nutrition promotion and data collection,
the Posyandu, uses monthly growth monitoring and promotion throughout the country to
measure trends in child nutrition and provide nutrition behavior change communication to
caregivers. There are more than 260,000 Posyandu in Indonesia, with more than 1.3 million
CHWs. This program provides a huge potential to contribute to improving the health and
nutrition of women and child. However, the system faces challenges of poor data quality and
time delays between data collection, analysis, and action. Since chronic and widespread child
malnutrition remains a serious problem in the country, the limitation of the system weakens
the Posyandu in improving children’s nutritional status.
The ubiquity of the mobile phone in most of the districts in Indonesia made it an ideal device
for the project’s purpose. According to the Indonesian Association of Cellular Telephones
(ATSI), there are 250 million mobile phone subscribers in Indonesia. In 2010, there were 103
mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people in Indonesia. Moreover, there are 11 mobile
network operators in the telecommunications sector. This provides a potential of using mobile
phone technology to improve Posyandu service quality.
Stakeholder Engagement
 Ministry of Health
Targets
The pilot project is being implemented in four districts in Indonesia covering urban areas
(East and North Jakarta) and rural areas (Sikka and TTU Districts). There are 40 CHWs
participating in the pilot project.
Contact
11.2013
Project Management
Sigit Sulistyo
Maternal Child Health & Nutrition Specialist
World Vision Indonesia
T: +62 21 31927467
E: sigit_sulistyo@wvi.org