CommCare makes health service easier

Recent data says that the number of smartphone users in Indonesia continues to rise sharply. With the high number of smartphone users, the government could easily use the smartphone media to spread some information and other services.

World Vision Indonesia in cooperation with the Indonesian Health Ministry have developed CommCare, an application of Integrated Health Post (Posyandu) service and monitoring. This application was developed in February 2013, and implementation started in September 2014. 

Three villages in East Nusa Tenggara were chosen as the initial testing ground for Mobile Posyandu.

With the CommCare application, Posyandu staff don't need to write down children's health scores in a manual book. Previously, this traditional system was considered ineffective because not all cadres forwarded the health information to midwives- who were their supervisors.

By using a smartphone, the data can be directly sent to the midwives through the online application. Everytime the health staff or midwives want to download the information, they just open the application.

The data will be automatically processed so that health staff can see the children's health status in three color indicators - red, green, or yellow - which indicates the range of malnutrition to healthy weight.

Rohot, is one of Posyandu who has applied the service through a smartphone. Rohot was chosen as a pilot village since they have a strong mobile signal.

The cadres of Posyandu were trained during November 2014. They applied the mobile Posyandu service on December 2014. Today, the mobile Posyandu is still running and it will continue to be evaluated through 2015.

*Written by Rena Tanjung, Field Communications officer, World Vision Indonesia