India Launches Digital Platform for Children's Health Records 

• Integrates child's health data through cloud computing and mobile technology
• Revolutionary automated long-term surveillance of vaccination records and growth
• Real time data for early detection of obesity or malnutrition
• Authentic data for all research related to child's growth across geographical boundaries

Your child's health records will now be made available at a click of a button. India's first ever digital platform, the Integrated Child Health Record (ICHR), for keeping a child's health record, has been launched recently. Supported by cloud computing and mobile technology, ICHR is a revolutionary product to map a child's health and track vaccination. ICHR is supported by a first-of-its-kind mobile application to address pressing concerns of parents willing to track their child's growth and vaccination. The mobile interface will be available for both Android and iOS users. The eminent scientist Samir K. Brahmachari was present as chief guest to launch and endorse ICHR.

Speaking on the occasion, Professor Brahmachari, J.C Bose national fellow, founder director of CSIR - Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology, and former director general of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, says: "I am happy to announce/endorse this product in the ICT domain by a young entrepreneur with high social value, which is aligned to the government of India's digital vision."

ICHR provides and automates long-term surveillance of a child's growth. It has other benefits like it will also help in early detection of obesity and malnutrition in urban and rural populations respectively. It also addresses the dire need of maintaining the data centrally for research purposes. Once fully implemented, ICHR will become a potent tool in providing authentic, region-specific data for analysing and identifying reasons and probable solutions for both child vaccination and growth-related issues.

Commenting on the merits of ICHR, Dr. Raghuram Mallaiah, director neonatologist, Fortis Le Femme, says, "This application is all about empowering parents regarding their child's vaccination and growth. This application removes the manual vaccination cards and makes the experience paperless and traceable from any part of the world. This is the only app available in India to track the growth of premature babies both in the hospital and once they have been discharged from the hospital. This will be particularly beneficial for both doctors and parents to track the growth parameters of premature babies (Fenton Chart), not only while they are in hospital but even after their discharge for up to five years (only app which continues from Fenton chart to the WHO chart)." He further explains that the application can be used in both urban and rural areas to track growth parameters in children up to five years old and help in early detection of obesity (increasing trend of obesity as per WHO guidelines) and malnutrition. This will also help in much needed collection of data across India with regards to vaccination uptake.

WHO data indicate that we have 235 million children of zero to nine years out of our total population of 1.25 billion, with a physicians density of 6.49 physicians per 10,000 population. We witness 7 lacs neonatal deaths every year and almost 3 lacs of such cases are because of lack of vaccinations. These children die due to diarrhoea and pneumonia, making India rank as third lowest amongst 15 other high-burden countries across the globe for its Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea.Once fully implemented, ICHR will be useful in providing authentic region with specific data for analyzing and identifying reasons and probable solutions for such problems.

Harpreet Singh, chief technology officer of Oxyent Medical, the company behind ICHR says, "Our main aim behind this product is to provide a paperless authenticated platform integrating doctors, hospitals, and parents.The platform will provide automated vaccination records and will monitor the growth schedule. Additionally, the technology is secure and HIPAA compliant. It is a cloud-based solution, which can be easily linked to hospital HIS/EMR systems via HL7 or integration adaptors. There is no physical software installation needed to start using iCHR. Being on Amazon Cloud, a doctor can access real time patient information regarding growth and vaccination from any part of world using the internet."

Oxyent Medical is the first company to bring such a technology in child health care. The company claims to provide a dedicated front end and back end team to support the users. On the pricing, Singh added that the technology is available at effective pricing. "It amounts to one-third of your monthly newspaper bill," he says.

Some of the other key features of ICHR's service package include the following:

• Digital Health Record: Lifelong vaccination record and growth charts integrated and stored both in hospital and on parent's mobile phone.
• Retainership: Engage and retain parents by promotions and reminders through ICHR.
• Periodic Reminders: Notifications and reminders on vaccination due dates.
• Vaccine Brand Information: Automated entry of vaccine brands used by hospital/doctor. The entry of Vaccine Brand vaccine is done manually, not automatic.
• Due Date Calculator: Automatic calculation of next vaccine date if previous vaccine has been delayed, thereby ensuring that there is an optimal time interval between two doses of the vaccine.
• Growth Charts: Parents can sit at home and track their child's growth using the interactive growth charts, on their mobile phone.
• Long-Term Vaccination Surveillance: To understand different trends and uptake of specific vaccinations in the population.

Source: Oxyent Medical