Repository on maternal child health: Health portal to improve access to information on maternal child health in India

Abstract

BackgroundQuality and essential health information is considered one of the most cost-effective interventions to improve health for a developing country. Healthcare portals have revolutionalized access to health information and knowledge using the Internet and related technologies, but their usage is far from satisfactory in India. This article describes a health portal developed in India aimed at providing one-stop access to efficiently search, organize and share maternal child health information relevant from public health perspective in the country.MethodsThe portal ‘Repository on Maternal Child Health’ was developed using an open source content management system and standardized processes were followed for collection, selection, categorization and presentation of resource materials. Its usage is evaluated using key performance indicators obtained from Google Analytics, and quality assessed using a standardized checklist of knowledge management. The results are discussed in relation to improving quality and access to health information.ResultsThe portal was launched in July 2010 and provides free access to full-text of 900 resource materials categorized under specific topics and themes. During the subsequent 18 months, 52,798 visits were registered from 174 countries across the world, and more than three-fourth visits were from India alone. Nearly 44,000 unique visitors visited the website and spent an average time of 4 minutes 26 seconds. The overall bounce rate was 27.6%. An increase in the number of unique visitors was found to be significantly associated with an increase in the average time on site (p-value 0.01), increase in the web traffic through search engines (p-value 0.00), and decrease in the bounce rate (p-value 0.03). There was a high degree of agreement between the two experts regarding quality assessment carried out under the three domains of knowledge access, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer (Kappa statistic 0.72).ConclusionsEfficient management of health information is imperative for informed decision making, and digital repositories have now-a-days become the preferred source of information management. The growing popularity of the portal indicates the potential of such initiatives in improving access to quality and essential health information in India. There is a need to develop similar mechanisms for other health domains and interlink them to facilitate access to a variety of health information from a single platform.

Behavioural change models for infectious disease transmission: a systematic review (2010–2015)

“…[44], Karimi et al [45]—Social DistancingPoletti et al . [46], Mummert & Weiss [47], Zhong et al [48]Larson & Nigmatulina [49], Wang [50], Greer [51], Morin et al . [52], Liu et al .…”

Visualising and systematizing a per-poor ICT intervention for Rural and Semi-urban Mothers in India

“…1 st trimester (weeks 1-12), 2 nd trimester (weeks 13-28) and 3 rd trimester (weeks 29-40). For the purpose of depiction in our application, we identified each target division with the associated medical tests, signs and symptoms, the possible problems and complications that may arise, the prescribed medication and diet, and healthy practices and precautionary measures [7,[13][14][15]28]. In this manner, we determined the information architecture that the medical data in our ICT would subscribe to.…”

How can knowledge exchange portals assist in knowledge management for evidence-informed decision making in public health?

“…Khanna et al [23] were the only authors to specifically use the criteria by Lee et al [11] and Goh et al [13] to conduct a ‘quality assessment’ of a portal in regards to features supporting knowledge management. Their assessment revealed that the maternal child health portal contained many features to support knowledge access, but not knowledge creation (e.g.…”

“…related to chronic disease prevention [22], cancer prevention or control [26] and maternal and child health [23]. Maintaining the credibility, reliability and level of evidence accessible through these portals is particularly important.…”

“…While Khanna et al [23] and McKibbon [24] both demonstrated an increase in number of unique visits to their respective portals over time, the retention of users (i.e. high bounce rates and low proportion of returning visits) remained a problem.…”