How Data is Transforming Models of Care
Digital health and data science holds promise for significant advances in health care access, quality and affordability. This has become all the more relevant during COVID-19, where lockdowns and unprecedented strains on global health systems have called for accelerated innovations to care models. Last week saw Innovations in Healthcare and McKinsey & Company unite global leaders in health innovation to explore how emerging digital technologies could radically shift models of care and bring powerful new tools to both patients and providers.
Jacaranda Health’s Co-Executive Director, Nick Pearson, shared the story and current impact of PROMPTS, Jacaranda’s AI-enabled digital health platform. After launching affordable maternity hospitals in Nairobi, Jacaranda’s founders realized that the innovations they’d developed could have a direct impact on government health systems where 80% of mums in Kenya deliver their babies. By giving mums a voice in the health system and leveraging innovations in digital health, PROMPTS now helps reduce barriers to health service access for 660,000 pregnant women and mothers in the country, connecting them to critical care when and where they need it.
What we learnt…
Jacaranda’s DNA is built on health equity, and PROMPTS is a digital tool to drive this forward. The technology behind the platform is deliberately designed to be inclusive, making the service accessible to all women in Kenya regardless of the device they use, the area they live, their insurance coverage, or financial position.
Impact → In the areas where Jacaranda operates, over 50% of all pregnant women are enrolled in the PROMPTS platform, bringing quality care closer to women across the country who might not otherwise have been able to access it.
As enrollment to the PROMPTS platform grows, Jacaranda is not only able to influence the behavior and outcomes of mothers themselves, but also - in partnership with government health systems - share its insights to inform health providers and managers, helping make iterative improvements in the way care is delivered.
Impact → During COVID-19, Jacaranda used geospatial data and real-time feedback from mothers using PROMPTS to track facility closures and irregular operating hours, which in turn helped government partners mitigate widespread disruption to essential maternal and newborn health services.
Data collected through PROMPTS can be used to address wider health system challenges, inform broader health system insights and support national decision-making by tracking ‘hotspots’ for preventive and promotive services.
Impact → Through PROMPTS, Jacaranda have been able to track newborn immunization rates across Kenya, as well as the availability of critical blood supplies across county-level facilities to get blood to mums experiencing obstetric hemorrhage, faster.