Advancing Maternal Health Services with Digital Technology with ANCHAL (Antenatal Neonatal & Child Health Systems and Logistics Tracking Tool)

Advancing Maternal Health Services with Digital Technology with ANCHAL (Antenatal Neonatal & Child Health Systems and Logistics Tracking Tool)

UNDP India, in partnership and guidance from the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Maharashtra is successfully implementing ANCHAL, an innovative digital solution that helps to address critical service delivery gaps in maternal health care. The project aims to reduce maternal death and improve efficiencies in service delivery by making the maternal health care system proactive by well preparing and connecting all stakeholders and service providers much ahead of the delivery. The initiative does this by identifying and tracking high-risk pregnancies, ensuring transport facilities are available on time for beneficiaries, and informing the district

level health facilitates in advance on upcoming delivery load. ANCHAL links the health facility and ambulances into a one common digital ecosystem ensuring that the woman reaches the right facility at the right time for her delivery thus reducing morbidity and mortality.

Achievements

ANCHAL is being implemented in all 13 blocks of in Pune District of Maharashtra, India.
More than 6500 health workers including Medical officers (MOs), Staff Nurses (SNs), Lady Health Visitors (LHVs), Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) have been trained on ANCHAL. Currently, ANCHAL has more than 4200 active users which includes around 2890 ASHAs, 588 ANMs, 240 MOs, 500 SNs and LHVs.
More than 23,000 eligible couples have been registered on ANCHAL.
More than 41000 pregnant women are registered out which nearly 6000 are high-risk pregnancies.

Aims

Scaling up the implementation of ANCHAL to the entire state of Maharashtra in partnership with the Department of Health and Family Welfare is planned along with integration with existing applications like ANMOL/RCH Portal and CoWIN for sustainability and scalability.

ANCHAL is helping to digitize three essential touch points in maternal health service delivery for pregnant woman - the frontline health worker, health facility and ambulance services. The application allows the field level health workers (Accredited Social Health Activist -ASHA and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives-ANMs) to register and track each pregnant woman till her delivery and helps identify those at high risk (for focused care).
The application has included innovative solutions like a digital summary card, a digital partograph and digital facility-based maternal death audits. Additionally, the project is working to build and train a network of UNDP field staff and government health workers to support the work of the frontline health workers by mentoring them to facilitate timely data entry and seamless coordination, in turn, helping to build an active system to respond well in time to maternal health needs of the population.