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Family Planning through the Mobile Phone, No Doctor Necessary!

Posted by MohiniBhavsar on Oct 02, 2010

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Family Planning through the Mobile Phone, No Doctor Necessary! data sheet 4878 Views

The Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University, has pioneered a new way to inform women of their fertility status using mobiles.  IRH conducted proof of concept testing in India for an SMS-based delivery of the Standard Days Method (SDM) as an information based, low-cost and non-hormonal method of family planning.

SDM is a scientifically tested fertility awareness-based method that is recommended by WHO as a modern, natural family planning method. From the first day of menses, in a 26-32 day cycle, a woman’s most likely fertile days are from days 8 to 19. Avoiding intercourse during these days of the cycle has been tested to show up to 95% effectiveness against pregnancy.

Because of the high use of traditional methods for family planning, and the ubiquity of mobile phones, IRH thought of developing an innovative mobile platform for reproductive health called CycleTel™. Currently in pilot phase, women can subscribe to the service via SMS on the first day of the menses, after which, a text message is sent to her mobile indicating her fertility status as per the 8-19 day fertile window.

Basic Information
Website URL: 
http://www.irh.org
Organization involved in the project?: 
Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University
Project goals: 

To offer the Standard Day Method, a non-hormonal, periodic abstinence, information-based method of family planning, through the mobile phone as an SMS service. The aim of the project was to transform an existing fertility awareness tool, called the CycleBeads®, to a mobile phone version.

Brief description of the project: 

Because of the high use of traditional methods for family planning, and the ubiquity of mobile phones, IRH thought of developing an innovative mobile platform for reproductive health called CycleTel™. Currently in pilot phase, women can subscribe to the service via SMS on the first day of the menses, after which, a text message is sent to her mobile indicating her fertility status as per the 8-19 day fertile window.

Target audience: 

Women in developing countries, who are interested in using a traditional method of family planning that is non-hormonal, periodic abstinence and information-based. Or women seeking to try other birth control methods than the pill, IUD or condom. Or, women currently using the CycleBeads® tool for family planning, but would like switch to a mobile phone-based tool.

Due to literacy barriers observed in the proof of concept testing, the target audience may shift focus to middle and high income women, who have higher educational background.

Detailed Information
Mobile Tools Used: 
FrontlineSMS
Length of Project (in months) : 
2
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 
  • While the SMS alerts were targetted to women, many male partners showed interest in also receiving the information to their phones. 
  • Messages sent in "Hinglish" were best understood.
  • Men and women, who participated in Cycletel pilot test, were willing to pay for the service. In the focus group discussions, women suggested 20-25 rupees, men suggested 15 rupees and couples suggested 30-35 rupees as reasonable monthly price for CycleTel.
  • Prior to the pilot test, a large investment was made to involve potential users of the service to give input in the design of the service and composing of text message alerts.
What did not work? What were the challenges?: 
  • A text message for the helpline number was sent later during the trial, and users preferred it to be sent earlier.
  • Women preferred responding to yes or no questions rather than entering key words like “red”, “date” or “agree”.
  • Women preferred that messages were limited to 1 SMS, instead of being broken into 2 SMSs.
  • Greetings, like “great”, “thank you”, confused participants and women did not know whether to answer or not. Often they thought they had to respond to every message they received.
  • After the pilot testing, there were several non-users. IRH learned that often their womens’ mobiles were switched off.
  • There was incompatibility between the major mobile network operators Vodafone, Reliance and Airtel that impeded their use of the CycleTel service.
  • Though initially, SMS messaging was thought to be a common practice, IRH learned quickly that many women who own a mobile phone were not in fact in the habit of actually writing and sending SMSs. Instead, women more commonly were accustomed to forwarding SMS.
Links to any evaluations/reports/research: 
http://mobileactive.org/resear... 


 




  
The Mobile Minute: Opera's State of the Mobile Web, California's Mobile Alert System, and Installing a Mobile Analytics Service


Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Sep 01, 2010


Today's Mobile Minute brings you news on the state of the mobile web, California's plan to be the first state with a mass mobile alert system, Cisco's (rumored) move to buy Skype, a guide to installing PercentMobile on different platforms, and results from a study on the effects of SMS reminders for taking birth control pills. 

    

            

                            

        







 

        
      
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