• Home
• Analysis
• Policy
• Central Government
• Local Government
• Healthcare
• Education
• Digital Inclusion
• Technology
• Security

Healthcare

Indian city govt provides vaccination text alerts

By Crystal Low | 13 July 2009

The Chennai Corporation, a civic body that governs the city of Chennai, will send text messages to women who have registered to use healthcare facilities, informing them of the vaccination schedule for their babies.

The SMS alert service is part of the city’s disease tracking system which will be installed at the civic body’s health posts and dispensaries. “The development of the software has been completed. The hardware will be procured shortly,” Corporation Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni said.

The disease tracking system would be the first such initiative by a Municipal Corporation in the country, said Lakhoni.

“The response time of the Corporation to epidemics will reduce considerably after the installation of the system,” he said. Around 74 dispensaries and 93 health posts of the civic body will be linked through the online system in two months. A pilot project was launched at the Perumalpet health post recently.

More than 170 000 individuals will benefit under the SMS scheme, Lakhoni said. Messages for those without mobile phones would be sent to the mobile phones of health workers of the civic body. Women giving birth in Corporation hospitals will be given a unique identification number as part of the new disease tracking system. Personal details of the patient, including phone number and address, will be collected during registration.

---