We presented Access to Health with Techfugees

In honor of Refugee Week  this past June, we presented our virtual  #tech4refugees pitch with @techfugees, see out pitch under Challenge#2:Access to Health! 

HERA DIGITAL HEALTH

(TURKEY, USA) 

“Less than 30% of refugee mothers receive regular health checkups as required by the WHO during their pregnancy. Less than 20% of refugee children are up to date with their vaccinations, leading to a high risk of preventable infectious diseases. Most of their health records are incomplete or outright missing. Some refugee host countries provide refugees with free prenatal healthcare and children vaccinations but most refugees are not aware of it. Refugees also fear asking for information due to the risk of deportation. In short, there is a huge information gap between available healthcare benefits and facilities for refugees, and how to access them. 

HERA aims to ensure all forcibly displaced people have access to healthcare regardless of where they go. Our solution, the Hera Digital Health platform, a super simple to use mobile app, aims to totally eradicate this information gap and bring the health checkup and vaccination levels of refugee families up to WHO’s recommended standards. With close to no learning curve and translated into 5 languages (Turkish, Dari, Pashto, Arabic and English), users only need to enter:

1) Their pregnancy week / date of last menstruation
2) If they have children, birth dates of all their children

Based on their host country’s healthcare facilities and benefits available to refugees, the app will:

1) Automatically populate their medical appointments calendar with dates of necessary prenatal checkups
2) Automatically populate their medical appointments calendar with dates of vaccinations required
3) Send push notification reminders 7 days and 1 day before appointment dates
4) Display the list of health centers near the refugee’s location where they can access free vaccinations and prenatal checkups.

A week after the recommended dates, the app asks the user if he/she has gone for the recommended checkup or vaccination. If a yes is marked, the mother / children’s medical checkup and vaccination records are automatically saved. This makes it easy for not only mothers but also doctors to check what vaccinations and checkups have been obtained.

A pilot study has been done with 3000+ families in Turkey and 40+ families in the Nebraska refugee camp. Based on the feedback gathered, we have built v2.0 of our mobile app that is live on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Rewatch the full pitch here. 

How to support: To amplify their work you can 1/ take part in field testing in the communities where HERA is based 2/ Support their code (https://github.com/Hera-Digital-Health-Open-Source) 3/ Replicate their service in areas where HERA is not yet present. Please also know that Hera is hiring on a regular basis. Do reach out to [email protected]

Here is all presentation : https://twitter.com/Techfugees/status/1556921829461266432?s=20&t=qnFhQ9_JtGGEGJ2GeF6iHw