IIT Roorkee, AIIMS Delhi develop SwasthGarbh app for pregnant women

The Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee and New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have developed 'SwasthGarbh' smartphone app for providing antenatal care and real-time medical support to pregnant women.

The app has been posited as a tool women in rural areas or those who may not have easy access to doctors can use. The app that provides instantaneous advice by doctors and is clinically endorsed and credible.

It assists pregnant women by ensuring timely antenatal care visits, recording every clinical test, and improving medication adherence.

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Congratulating the researchers, Prof KK Pant, Director, IIT Roorkee, said: “The utility of telemedicine in healthcare has been brought to the forefront by the Covid-19 pandemic. The smartphone, with over one billion users worldwide, has tremendous potential to transform the field of medical sciences and improve healthcare.”

Sahil Sharma and Prof Deepak Sharma from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Roorkee, along with Prof Vatsla Dadhwal and Prof Aparna Sharma from AIIMS, New Delhi, developed ‘SwasthGarbh,’ to promote prenatal care that is holistic and patient-centered as apps used in pregnancy mostly provide pregnancy-related information and lack the involvement of clinicians.

A research paper highlighting the benefits of 'SwasthGarbh' App has also been published in the prestigious peer-reviewed IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Elaborating on the research, Prof Deepak Sharma, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Roorkee, said, “As higher Neonatal Mortality Rate is an alarming concern, SwasthGarbh Mobile App will provide real-time medical support to all pregnant women and improve maternal-fetal health. This is a gift from IIT Roorkee to all the women in India/World and will help us to move forward in the Prime Minister’s AtmaNirbhar Swasth Bharat mission.”

Highlighting the utility of the app, Prof Rama Chaudhry, Dean (Research), AIIMS New Delhi, said, “'SwasthGarbhi App will be quite useful for providing potential solutions to common problems in pregnancy. Our goal is to make the SwasthGarbh App reach every household of our country and thus save precious maternal-fetal lives.”

A clinical assessment of 150 patients demonstrated the utility of the app. The patients registered on the app showed a significantly higher number of mean antenatal visits and better compliance with the WHO guidelines. It also helped in better counselling of patients regarding the formulation of birth plans and the management of physiological problems encountered in pregnancy.