Antonius H. Pudjiadi, Catharine M. Sambo
Indonesia as an archipelago has more than thirteen thousand islands with around 90 millions children and 5 million live births annually. This prompted the need to develop a system that can help monitor children?s growth and development, record immunization, and educate parents and community about basic child health needs. It is known that approximately half of Indonesian population are internet users, with high rates of social media use. Therefore, Indonesian Pediatric Society launched two health apps in 2018, namely PrimaKu and PrimaPro, to help parents, pediatricians, and other health care professionals serve the aforementioned need.
PrimaKu was primarily developed for parents with growth monitoring and simple developmental prescreening features. It is also equipped by immunization records, immunization information and schedule reminder, tips for developmental stimulation, and child health articles, aligned with Indonesian Ministry of Health recommendation to monitor child growth and development using Maternal and Child Health Handbook. Suggestions to consult medical professionals are given to parents upon certain results of nutritional status or developmental prescreening. Child?s growth, development, and immunization data in parents? PrimaKu can be read by pediatricians? PrimaPro, by linking both smartphones during face-to-face consultation. After PrimaPro?s patient session is closed, data was erased, thus optimizing data privacy protection to parents only. PrimaPro, currently in beta version, was developed to help health professionals serve in health facilities. PrimaPro can be develop to suit the need of specific functions needed by health facilities.
In this Annual Scientific Meeting of Indonesian Pediatric Society, pediatricians share their experience in using PrimaKu and PrimaPro during their daily practice. Examples of practical use were shown in Komunitas Pejuang Jantung (Cardiac Warrior Community), growth and developmental clinic practice, as well as in daily practice as general pediatrician. With 160,000+ current PrimaKu users, further study is still required on how these apps can further serve their purpose to promote child health in Indonesia.