Current Scenario

The current medical statistics clearly show that the situation is catastrophic. Only 31% of the total births are attended by skilled personnel (World health statistics, WHO, 2007). This leads to Infant mortality rate in Pakistan being highest among SAARC countries standing at 70 deaths per 1,000 live births (The State of Pakistan's Children, 2006, SPARC, Islamabad) Moreover Pakistan also has the highest maternal mortality rate in South Asia (Infant-maternal mortality rate in Pakistan highest in S. Asia, Dawn June 21, 2007).

The objective of this project is to change this situation. But being agriculture based country, most of Pakistan's population lives in far flung and remote areas where accessibility is an important issue. These people do not have access to medical care as the health services infrastructure in these areas is nil. The density of doctors in the population is very scarce. According to the World health statistics by WHO for 2007, Pakistan has one physician for 1351 people, a nurse for 3225 people, a midwife for every 6666 people, a pharmacist for 20000 people and a dentist for every 20000 people. Moreover, many of the doctors (especially the specialist doctors) prefer to serve in urban areas where they have access to all facilities of life.

The attainment of Millennium Development Goals is as yet elusive. The failure of existing systems in this regard is evident from the fact that Maternal Mortality Ratio in Pakistan increased from 350 per 100,000 live births to 400 during year 2000 to 2005 (Pakistan Millennium Development Goals Report 2005 (PMDGR05), page 45, Planning Commission Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution Islamabad, September 2005). The MDG for Pakistan is to achieve an MMR of 140 per 100,000 live births by the deadline of year 2015. The MDGs related to child and maternal care can be achieved only through a coordinated health care system. The Government of Pakistan has a plan of expanding the lady health workers network and introducing 50,000 more lady health workers during 2005-10 (PMDGR05, page 49). Therefore, to bring about a change, we need to develop a low cost infrastructure which would provide basic monitoring and care to these people in remote areas by providing the existing workforce of lady health workers with an infrastructure which links them to the tertiary health care units/hospitals

Objectives

The primary objective of this project is to develop a reliable, efficient and easily deployable remote patient monitoring system that can play a vital role in providing basic health services to the remote village population of Pakistan at their door step. This system can enable expert doctors to monitor patients in remote areas of Pakistan. As a result, the patients no longer need to travel long distances to reach to the nearest basic health units and then just be examined by a mere GP. The project will identify the most important issues in the design of a remote health care monitoring system and will develop a low cost solution, which will be provided to the lady health workers (LHWs) for this purpose.

Our aim is to use advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to develop a monitoring system that could enhance the quality of health care provided by the lady health workers. A direct consequence of this system in the long duration is to save lives of mother and child; reduction of Infant Mortality Ratio (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) is our end objective. This project is proposed inline with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)* planned by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The following two MDGs are targeted by this project:

                              Reduced child mortality                              Improve maternal health 

The whole project is a 28 month effort culminating in the release of a remote patient monitoring system after practical deployment and testing in the real world environment. With focus on antenatal care, the success of this project means better child and maternal health care. Maternal care is not associated with an exclusive segment of society. It is an issue of all households. So, better maternal care will ultimately result in the creation of a better society that has progressive trends.

(*) For details about United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), visit their website: http://www.undp.org/mdg/tracking_targetlist.shtml