Khushi Baby: A High-Tech Way to Track Infant Health
Friday, May 29, 2015
It looks like a dangling, shiny plastic charm, but it’s actually an innovative high-tech device that may revolutionize health care in India. This is Khushi Baby, a small medical device designed to streamline the process of vaccinating children in the developing world.
“Appreciating the cultural nuances is extremely important when attempting to propose an intervention of this kind but also for doing field work in general,” explained the company’s Indian American cofounder, Ruchit Nagar, in an e-mail interview with India-West.
“However, we don’t want to stop with India. We are in conversation with several other organizations — VillageReach, Gates, and others — to see how we can expand in other countries and break new ground in the mHealth [mobile health] space.”
The sturdy plastic Khushi Baby pendant holds a small near-field communication chip that stores an infant’s vaccination and health records. A health care worker scans the chip to see what vaccinations the baby needs, using a simple mobile phone app that requires no Internet connection. Once back in cellular range, the worker can then upload the data to the cloud — and other medical professionals can see the information in real time.
Nagar, a senior studying biology, global health, and epidemiology at Yale University, helped develop Khushi Baby as part of a class project. Nagar is also a Global Health Fellow and Master of Public Health candidate at Yale School of Public Health.
The project won Yale’s $25,000 Throne Prize for Social Innovation in Health, and Nagar and his team traveled to Rajasthan in July 2014, where they built and developed the product while working with local villagers and community healthcare workers.
Source: India West (link opens in a new window)
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