GRAVID: an indigenous m-health tool for smart and connected communities

Abstract

The rapid proliferation and ubiquitous nature of mobile technology within the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) driven smart and connected communities (SCC) paradigm promises a unified framework for tackling community-based health challenges. Maternal and child mortality remains a major public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa, with one of its leading cause being inadequate provision of nutrients (or under-nutrition). This paper presents an indigenous mobile health (or mHealth) solution, named GRAVID, to address the gap of unavailability of context-based information on nutrition, medical, drug and substance use appropriate to meet identified needs of gravid women and subsequently their babies (for 5 years); within the African context. GRAVID also provides a monitoring tool for healthcare givers to track the progress of the gravid woman they oversee. The project was implemented with Android software development kit (SDK) for cost-effective development and widespread community coverage. It is intended that this solution will also provide a source of collecting data to update necessary information as well as addressing related community-based issues to reduce the maternal and child mortality rates.