New Indiana pregnancy app aims to reduce infant mortality rate
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — There’s a new pregnancy app available to women in Indiana.
Indianapolis-based eimagine created the app with several partners. They were commissioned by the Indiana Department of Health to take on the task with a goal to reduce the state’s infant mortality rate.
State officials say more than 600 babies died before their first birthday in Indiana in 2015. That rate is the 7th worst in the nation.
Officials and the app creators believe the infant mortality rate will improve if women are encouraged to get pre-natal care, the barriers to get that care are reduced, and women are guided through pregnancy.
Joel Russell, eimagine CEO, says making that information easy and accessible is key.
“One of the things that we found is people will often miss their rent payment, but they won’t miss their mobile phone payment. So if you have them on their phone, that’s the real place you really need to educate people. And again, it’s specifically targeting those people that are high risk and so it had to be friendly on the phone,” Russell said.
Once you download and launch the app, you can register and provide some personal information so that the app can help track your pregnancy and provide you with specific information week-by-week. However, you can also use the app anonymously as a guest.
“I mean, think about it, you’re a 14-year-old girl, you find out you’re pregnant. It’s scary. What do you do? And you’re going to get a state app to help you? That sounds a little scary, so we had to put the user experience together to make it engaging and fun for the users from really any age,” Russell said.
The Liv: A Pregnancy App includes nutrition information, an interactive calendar and more than 100 articles and checklists based on the “best medical practices.” It also offers contact information for doctors, hospitals, food banks, government aid programs and birthing centers.
The app is free and available in the Apple and Android app stores. If you don’t have a smart phone or would rather access the information through a computer, you can do so here.