2017 ICT4D Conference

The MoHFW’s Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A) Strategy is being implemented across the country through a robust health care system with the participation of various health personnel at all levels. A remarkable strength of the program is huge number of frontline workers who are supported by their supervisory officials at block, district, division and state level to provide hands-on support and guidance to address the identified gaps. However, the supportive supervision throws up the several challenges making it a weak link in the entire RMNCH+A strategy. Therefore, the MoHFW has taken a creditable initiative in developing a checklist along with its standard operating procedures (SoP) for ensuring effective supportive supervision. The objective of developing this comprehensive plan of supportive supervision is to bring improvement in service delivery at the facilities as well as in the performance of the health personnel at various levels.

Furthermore, to strengthen the supportive supervision and program related decisions emanating thereof, MoHFW envisaged to develop a software to capture the findings of supportive supervision visits to the health facilities, appropriate escalation of assigned actions to ensure timely mitigation and proposed plan of action. The MoHFW, supported by BMGF, entrusted JSI to develop a software with the above mention objectives. In the first phase, software was developed and demonstrated successfully before the top leadership of the MoHFW.

The MoHFW has now decided to go forward with one common application with different features and various functionalities. The key features of the software are:
1. Auto generate action items to be assigned by level, designation/name, Timeline
2. Planned vs actual supervision
3. Action item status
4. Delays in action resolution
5. Improvement in facilities
6. Indicator wise gap in facilities
7. Unsupervised facilities

MoHFW being the main driver of the activity is supported NHSRC, BMGF, JSI & other leading development partners.