Making it easy for parents to track their children's immunisation and stay in control of their busy schedules
How might we help parents plan for and remember their child’s immunisation appointments
There are an estimated 350,000 births around the world everyday. Even though we all come from different cultures and geographies there are some common threads during the birth of a child. It is usually a period of celebration of new life, but at the same time it's the beginning of a new responsibility, especially for the parents. From day one the child needs to begin taking the required immunisations to protect them from diseases and to ensure proper growth and development. The parents need to remember when and what vaccines need to be taken and also to ensure they attend their immunisation appointments on schedule. This can be challenging especially for parents with busy schedules or first time parents. From the survey results linked in the appendix below more than 60% of parents said they have missed an immunisation appointment and forgetting the date was the major reason. Most parents either rely on the hospital immunisation card which can easily be misplaced or damaged, or they try to keep track with a diary. When parents forget their children’s immunisation appointment more than 60% of them have negative feelings about themselves and feel like bad parents. Research has found that these negative feelings can have a further negative impact on the health of the child.
Our preliminary user research to validate this problem with parents in Nigeria provided the following insights
Based on the results of the survey and interviews the proposed solution is a mobile app for parents to track and record the immunisation of their children. The app would have the below key features.
The 4 weeks I spent working on this Co.lab sprint have been very insightful. 2 key learnings for me were: