Health In Slums, Bangalore is an initiative started by The University of Sheffield,UK, which is aimed to work as a collective where different firms and individuals focusing their efforts on slums can come together, and address larger issues.
This particular project was a collaborative effort between the Public Health and Outreach team from Baptist Hospital, a Technical and Data Collection team from EHE Innovations, and the Design team from IcarusNova.
The aim of this project was to understand the prevelance of Baptist Hospital's outreach programme in one of the largest slums in Bangalore, while also proposing a new system for better screening of the resident population, easier collection of data and samples, deployment of teams and of course, spread awareness about largely ignored, but prevalent medical conditions.
To understand the reach of the programme, the Nova team shadowed and observed the Public Health Doctors and the CHWs assigned to the different slums. Understanding the current scenario of home visits carried out by the CHWs, leading to footfalls at the nearest PHC, concerns and needs of the staff at the PHC, as well as understanding the other aspects of equipment, and inventory management were but a few of the many aspects that observed.
With a very focused approach, and in a relatively short time frame, the Nova team proposed a new a system, which would aid the local PHCs to organise and maintain their inventory, deploy leaner and efficient teams into the slums, who could cover more ground to improve their outreach, and have better formats to collect and store data.
To ensure that all the different teams of Doctors, CHWs, Engineers, Software developers and Data analysts, understood the new proposed process and nothing was lost in translation, the Nova team created a series of illustrations, presentations and real time mock drills. We also provided support by developing physical medical kits for the Doctors and the CHWs, with appropriate trainings on usage of the devices, collection of the data and samples.
