IIT Madras developing IT Tool to improve health of rural SC community in Chittoor district

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has developed an Information Technology tool to monitor and improve the health of rural Scheduled Caste (SC) communities in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. The IT Tool, developed using open source software, was deployed to gather detailed household-level annual health-related information.

The information gathered will be used to make an objective assessment of the impact of medical treatment and will also provide dietary advice on priority health issues. “This would lead to evolving an optimal rural healthcare plan based on treatment efficacy and expenses,” the institute said.

The project was implemented in E Palaguttapalli SC and its adjoining hamlets, PakaJa Mandal and Pulicherla Mandal, in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, which have a population of around 100 Scheduled Caste households, each having 5-6 members.

“In the past, their diet consisted of mainly ragi and other millets, plenty of milk products, fish and other aquatic meat. Due to poverty, their current diet is dry and poor, devoid of dals, milk products or meat,” the team noted.

The doctor team from SV College of Ayurveda - Harnath Chary and Dr. Gnana Prasoonaamba visited the villages once in every two months and helped in effective implementation of this project.

The team found that the women and children are severely anaemic. It said that the correct dietary advice by expert health practitioners has been able to alleviate the symptoms. They also organised internet-based live interactions every alternate month where special lectures on improving health were delivered.

Also read | Engineering student’s innovation helps sari weavers change designs often, at low cost

Elaborating on the current status of this project, C Lakshmana Rao, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras, said, “In pilot villages, a detailed baseline survey and mapping of health status and health expenses using IT tools was undertaken. It was intended to address priority health issues through medical treatment and dietary advice and its monitoring using IT tools. A post-intervention survey and mapping of health status and health expenses using IT tools”

The tentative next steps taken by IIT Madras team include:

• Implementing a mobile application for digitizing the process and better analysis. Also, to create awareness on use of mobile applications with support of local youth volunteers.
• Initiate the customized drug discovery on par with specific diseases like anaemia and weakness.
• To regularly organize and monitor the patients as part of medical camps and encourage them in adapting healthy habits.
• To investigate the specific disease-based parameters and evaluate them for further medications and treatments.