Shot in the arm for Kochi's health sector

The Kochi Corporation plans to join hands with a bunch of young techies to roll out a new scheme in the hospitals in Kochi. Using the new  non-profit web portal designed by five Kochi youngsters, the parents of new borns will be able to receive timely updates on the date of vaccinations.

The facility can be availed by just giving their e-mail id and phone numbers.

The web portal ‘www.alertable.in’ is developed by five young techies based in Kochi - Blesson Mathew Sam, Rahul Ramesh, Anoop Sam Abraham, Melvin John and Manu Mathew Thomas - who have just finished their graduation in computer science and engineering from College of Engineering, Chengannur. The alert system is the brain child of the company founded by them called ‘Codeyssus Labs’.

“The idea behind ‘Alertable’ came when we chanced upon the results of the National Health Survey 2008. The survey results were quite alarming; it said that barely 44 per cent of children in India get vaccinations,” said Blesson.

The severity of this situation prompted them to start thinking for a technology-based solution for this bottleneck. The main advantage of ‘Alertable’ is that it is very easy to register, Blesson said. “Parents who have registered earlier may view details regarding vaccination schedules by just entering their email id and phone number combination. On logging in, parents will receive a host of information about immunization schedules, including names of vaccines and scheduled dates and a detailed timeline about the child’s upcoming and completed vaccinations,” he said.

Tracking vaccinations have also been made easier with the facility to mark administered vaccines as ‘done’. Up to two children can be registered in the website with an email id and phone number combination.

The techies have given a formal proposal to Corporation Standing Committee for Health chairman T K Ashraf, to make this service readily available in city hospitals.

“We want to include technology in a slew of hospital services. We already have a tie up with Information Kerala Mission (IKM) to provide technology related solutions for various services in the hospitals.

The ‘alertable’ proposal comes with no financial burden for the corporation. We will look into how it can be implemented,” said T K Ashraf.

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