Must-have apps if you are a new or expectant mommy

For every expectant mother, pregnancy is a life-changing process, and a safe delivery is the ultimate goal.

According to a report by ReasearchMoz, the baby care market will progressively grow at a 17 percent CAGR from 2014 to 2019.

While there are many startups such as Kidsstoppress, BabyChakra, Parenting Nation and India Parenting that provide services to expectant mothers and new parents, the technology innovation in this area remains largely unexplored.

However, smartphones have now become tools of improvement in the healthcare industry.

While the maternity care apps are no substitute for professional medical advice, they can certainly help the mother and the to-be parents in many ways. From helping rural women track high-risk pregnancies, to tracking the child’s growth and keeping the mother fit, these apps are helping make motherhood and parenthood a whole lot easier.

YourStory lists a few maternity care apps that will help to-be mommies have a smooth pregnancy and a successful delivery.

Maatritva

Maatritva, a Nashik-based mobile-health platform for midwives, was founded by Pritish Agarwal, Abhishek Verma and Garima Dosar in April 2017. Through identification and tracking of high-risk pregnancy, the app aims to prevent complications during pregnancy and enable a safe delivery.

Maatritva first piloted on August 5, 2017, at Amboli’s Primary Health Centre (PHC), a tribal village in Maharashtra, which has zero mobile network connectivity. It was designed in the regional language with an option to be used without the internet. The midwives use the platform to record medical information of pregnant women in antenatal clinics conducted by them.

After seeing positive results, Maatritva scaled up and it is currently used by over 500 midwives, has over 1,000 active users and it has screened over 13,000 pregnant women. Maatritva also has ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers who visit houses of pregnant women once a reminder is sent to them. Women with high-risk pregnancies are referred to a high-level medical officer.

The founders intend to add various other features such as a referral module, information escalation module and birth preparedness module.

Savika

Founded by Raji Harish, Rajesh Kumar and Girish Patinharepatt, Hyderabad-based Psynapce India Private Ltd’s platform Savika helps expectant parents prepare for the journey. The app brings human, technology and product offerings together to teach to-be-parents the journey of pregnancy.

The app-based platform uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build chatbots that in turn answer the queries of the users. The team is looking to create a technology-enabled ecosystem where the couple, family and doctors can come together.

Savika helps in storing patient’s medical records, tracking the baby’s progress on a weekly basis (with the help of a personalised health tracker), reminding about vaccinations, tests and appointments and interacting with other parents and parents-to-be in the Savika community.

Savika helps parents to capture and record milestones and share it with other family members and friends. The app has more than 1,000 downloads on the Play Store.

Tinystep

Bengaluru-based Tinystep pregnancy and parenting app was launched by Suhail Abidion on September 2015.

Tinystep allows parents to interact with each other and share their parenthood experiences. Parents get to discuss information like planning for a baby, being pregnant and small but important details like breakfast for a two-year-old. The platform has a Q&A forum and also individual and group chats. Tinystep has also launched vaccination and growth charts and has tied up with a few doctors as well.

Tinystep, which launched as a parenting social network platform, raised $2 million in pre-Series A round from Flipkart in 2017, a year after it received seed funding from the ecommerce behemoth. Tinystep aspires to advance its product and become the ‘Zomato of baby care products and services’.

The startup claims to have half a million parents on its platform with about three lakh visits every day.

My Child

Launched on January 2015, My Child was founded by Harsh Ansari, Aafreen Ansari and Shreya Shrivastava. The platform helps parents screen disorders such as delayed motor coordination and neurological disordersin the child (1-24 months old).

The user has to provide a few basic details (such as height and weight of the child) to find if the child has any learning or developmental disorder.

My Child app raised $1,00,000 funding led by 500Startups and angel investors in January 2016, and has more than 1,000 downloads on the Play Store.

Daksh

Bengaluru-based Daksh, earlier known as Laborconnect, was developed by Arun Agarwal, a bio-medical engineer and founder of sustainable healthcare startup Janitri innovations in Bengaluru. The app was founded in 2016.

Daksh monitors the vital parameters of an expectant mother in the hours leading to the delivery. It is a mobile and tablet-based intelligent labour monitoring app, which allows medical advisors to enter the vital signs as well as reminds them to monitor the vitals. In cases of a complication, the app alerts the medical advisor.

Daksh aims to comply with WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines and ensure that women receive necessary care before their delivery. The Android app has more than 1,000 downloads and is rated five stars. The startup has successfully monitored 250 expectant mothers, as on August 2017.

Besides these platforms, others such as ZenParent, BabyBum, Pregnancy Pro, Pregnancy Assistant and Baby Pool that help expectant mothers to have a safe delivery.