BBC Mobile Academy to add 160,000 CHWs by Dec, 2015

BBC plans to scale Mobile Academy and Mobile Kunji to add additional 160,000 CHWs (community health workers) by December 2015.

So far, more than 70,000 unique users have used more than 2 million minutes across both services.

BBC Media Action has launched mobile health services for community health workers (CHWs) in Bihar. An IVR training course - ‘Mobile Academy' and a Multimedia Job Aid (IVR and print) - ‘Mobile Kunji' have been developed to help CHWs improve family health and reduce maternal and infant mortality in the state.

IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which they can service their own inquiries by following the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with prerecorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed.

"The objective of the programme is to reduce Infant and maternal mortality in Bihar, as the state has one the highest no of infant and maternal mortality, and since these deaths are largely preventive therefore Bill Gates signed a memorandum of collaboration with chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar to overhaul the private and public healthcare in the state by December 2015," said Sara Chamburline, CTO, BBC Media Action Plan.

The partnership aims to help the government of Bihar build on its recent successes and meet its goal of reducing mortality rates for mothers, newborns, infants and children under five by as much as 40 percent by 2015.

 

BBC Media Action has rolled Mobile Academy and Mobile Kunji out across eight districts in Bihar (Patna, Begusarai, Khagaria, Saharsa, Samastipur, East Champaran, West Champaran and Gopalganj) as part of face-to-face training programme for 40,000 CHWs. So far, more than 38,000 CHWs have been trained, face-to-face in social change communications, and how to use the mHealth services.

The IVR tools can be used on any handset and are available on common short codes across five operators -- Airtel, Idea, Tata, Reliance and Vodafone, throughout the state of Bihar.

These operators have reduced their standard commercial IVR tariffs by 90 percent in order to make these services affordable to base of the pyramid subscribers in rural India. Operators also share revenue with BBC Media Action and its technology platform provider, OnMobile, to help cover operational costs and make the services sustainable over time.

Mobile Kunji is an audio-visual counseling tool for CHWs to use during their counseling sessions with families in Bihar. CHWs use a virtually indestructible deck of 40 illustrated cards to communicate life-saving messages about maternal and child health to rural families. CHWs dial a toll free short code at the bottom of each card to play the related audio health message.

No navigation is required because each card has its own unique short code. Call costs for up to 40,000 CHWs for the first year will be covered by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Funding to cover call costs going forward has been approved by the Government of Bihar. Mobile Academy is an audio training course on family health for CHWs in Bihar.

The course is billed to CHWs at 50 paise per minute. The course is 160 minutes long, so the total cost of taking the course once is Rs 80 or approximately $1.5. Revenue from the course will cover costs incurred by the mobile operators and will help to cover other operational costs over the next four years.

The partnership aims to help the government of Bihar build on its recent successes and meet its goal of reducing mortality rates for mothers, newborns, infants and children under five by as much as 40 percent by 2015.

OnMobile is BBC Media Action's technology platform provider - responsible for giving the mobile operators' subscribers access to BBC Media Action IVR applications and content.

Mouli Raman, CEO & MD, OnMobile Global said, "OnMobile's service delivery platform to develop and deploy applications in regional languages in voice and other channels across telecom service providers in the country, has helped BBC Media action reach out to the users of project Ananya in Bihar, effectively, efficiently and quickly."

He further stated that OnMobile is contracted with the BBC Media action directly, working on a managed services fee model for this project and is a part of the share of revenues from services. BBC Media action reinvests its share of revenues in running the services and to help make the services financially self-sustainable over time.

Services are being extended to consumers on all the major telecom networks like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Tata, Reliance and BSNL in the state of Bihar. End users are charged a nominal call rate. Operator commercials as a share of revenue from services help them cover their network costs.