PositiveNewsCorner

Based on inputs by Meeta K

Janitri Innovations, a firm dedicated to ease the monitoring of pregnant women and fetus during the labor phase, is preventing death of newborns in India. The firm is backed by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Janitri’s flagship product- Keyar is an affordable and portable device which monitors the fetal heart rate and uterus contractions in realtime, and is capable of transferring readings on a mobile app. The application is easy to understand and doesn’t always require doctors or experts.

As per a media quote by the President of the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI), the number of stillbirths in the country was 5,92,090 in 2015 as reported by the medical journal Lancet. The numbers were devastating. The stillbirths are mostly reported from places where the majority of child births were conducted by staff nurses. Inmany instances, 80% of fetal heart rate and uterine contractions were either recorded inaccurately or ignored as the healthcare facilities lacked skilled staff and appropriate medical devices. Also, there’s almost no means of data transfer of the recordings from remote areas in case of consultations.

Keyar is precisely designed as a one-stop solution for this. Keyar has to be simply placed on a pregnant woman’s abdomen and both the parameters- fetal heart rate and uterine contractions are recorded. It also analyses the parameters and gives color coded/sound alerts if the fetus is in distress. These readings are then transmitted to Daksh, a tablet-based labour monitoring tool.

As soon as Daksh receives the parameters, a partograph is created automatically. Further, it enables the staff nurses to enter the vital signs of a pregnant woman such as blood pressure and pulse rate. It also reminds the nurse to monitor the labour vitals and update the data by sending an alarm after 30 minutes to check the fetal heart rate. It has an inbuilt algorithm which alerts the staff nurse in case of any complications.
Arun Agarwal, founder of Janitri says “Daksh also works in the form of a mobile app so that if the assigned doctor or gynecologist is on leave or in a meeting, he or she can be updated about the patient through the app. This allows the doctor to remotely instruct the staff nurse to intervene or call for consultation,”.