Poshan Tracker App
Context:
- The largest mobile phone nutrition monitoring system in world health history was launched by the Indian government with the Poshan Tracker. This will lead to India adopting a data-driven nutrition policy.
Additional global instances of app-based nutrition trackers:
- The Republic of Mauritius’s university academics’ tiny experiment in nine primary health facilities, or UNICEF’s RapidSMS project in Malawi.
About the App Poshan Tracker:
- The Anganwadi Centre (child care centres), the services rendered by Anganwadi Workers, and the full beneficiary management for expectant moms, nursing mothers, and children under six are all visible from a 360-degree perspective using this application.
- Additionally, it automates and digitises the physical registers that employees utilise to help raise the calibre of their job.
- Smartphones purchased through the Government e-Market (GeM) are being given to Anganwadi personnel in order to facilitate effective service delivery.
- Additionally, a nodal point has been designated to handle technical support and troubleshoot any issues pertaining to the download and operation of the new Poshan Tracker programme in each state.
- According to the sources, any migrant worker who had registered in their home state could visit the closest Anganwadi in their new community to take advantage of the programmes and services provided.
Poshan Tracker app’s advantages in India
- The Ministry of Women and Child Development recently announced the Poshan 2.0 guidelines, which include the Poshan Tracker as a key component. This centralised ICT-enabled platform was created to encourage accountability and transparency in the last mile delivery of nutrition services.
- The most recent information available from the Poshan Tracker Dashboard indicates that 72 million children under five have had their weight and height recorded using the Poshan Tracker. (real-time surveillance of nearly 50% of the nation’s youngsters; moreover, 94% of beneficiaries have had their Aadhar validated.)
- The Poshan Tracker dashboard collects data on three sets of indicators at the national, state, and district levels in addition to recipient data.
- The first is the Anganwadi infrastructure, which includes the quantity of Anganwadi centres constructed, whether or not they have running water or toilets, and if they are open for service delivery.
- Counting the number of recipients who were given hot meals and take-home rations—as opposed to raw rations—is the second step.
- Thirdly, keeping an eye on nutritional results.
- By identifying children who are struggling at an early age, focusing on beneficiaries who are experiencing acute malnutrition, and keeping an eye on the efficient provision of ICDS services, the Poshan Tracker is intended to serve as a real-time feedback loop for frontline workers in the fight against malnutrition.
The Poshan tracker has a number of modules, including:
Beneficiary enrolment:
- daily monitoring of the employment assistance module and the anganwadi worker’s home visit scheduler
- tracking growth (height/weight) in accordance with WHO guidelines,
- migration assistance for recipients relocating to another Anganwadi centre in the state or abroad,
- a dashboard for tracking some underperforming districts’ key performance metrics,
- as well as a reporting system for community involvement in nutrition promotion.
- Additionally, distinct modules for AWCs in border and tribal areas are being created.
- The Poshan Tracker app reduces the possibility of error when manually inputting nutrition data, which improves data accuracy.
- It automatically organises the child’s statistics into many groups.
- Through the Poshan Tracker, decision-makers can access beneficiary-specific data for prompt and local action that is based on observations made on the ground rather than models developed by academics.
- Real-time data transmission to municipal, state, and federal offices is made possible by the Poshan Tracker, which eliminates the need for several registers and manual entries.
- Apart from the expeditious transfer of data to the government, the Poshan Tracker app facilitates more time-efficient retrieval of child-specific information compared to large paper-based registers, especially when it comes to AWC care.
- The fact that Anganwadi workers in India are overworked must be taken into account, and great care must be made to make sure that the Poshan Tracker is regularly updated based on their comments to increase user-friendliness.
Way Forward:
- Poshan 2.0 guidelines state that the data from the Poshan Tracker can therefore serve as a catalyst for concrete, implementable changes at the local level.
