The rapid population growth in many developing nations has been attributed to the poor knowledge on family planning among women. In many parts of the world, the subject has been considered taboo and sensitive because of cultural reasons.
A testable prototype for an intuitive, literacy-neutral, audio and video-based mobile family planning information service was designed. The mobile service addresses the challenge women, especially non-literate women, face in accessing family planning information to educate themselves.
Funding and Partners
The project was funded by TEKES, a public Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation and Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India. Project was jointly executed in partnership with M4ID, Finland.
The service enables a woman to:
- access image, audio and video guided information on family planning and contraceptive methods in the click of a button.
- freely educate themselves at their own discretion
- record and send questions to Community Health Workers (CHW) who respond to the sender via a recorded message
- follow CHWs for information updates on the services provided
- scan a picture within a family planning brochure using the phone’s camera, to automatically retrieve audio/video content relating to the topic depicted by the picture
