Pakathon is a once a year civic hackathon that tackles problems in Pakistan. This year, it took place in 16 cities including Stanford, CA under the banner Pakathon Silicon Valley. 5 teams competed for a chance to win $10,000 at the finals that will take place on October 11th, 2014 at MIT. Out of the 5 teams that competed, AmmiTips was crowned the winner of Pakathon Silicon Valley.
What?
AmmiTips tackles the problem of infant mortality in Pakistan.
Why?
According to World Bank, 69 infants out of 1000 born, die in Pakistan every year before reaching the age of 1. Numbers are even more disturbing for infants who die within 28 days; 42 out of 1000. All this is preventable if expecting and new mothers are provided information critical to their child’s health.
How does it work?
It works by providing critical child health information by SMS (text) and Voice service. It’s a simple 3-step process:
- User calls a toll-free number.
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system helps you sign up by asking health related information. Available in both English and Urdu.
- That’s it, wait for the weekly SMS or Voice call.
Demo
My thoughts
When my wife was expecting, she signed up for Babycenter alerts. Every week, I would get important information about by son’s development by email. Both me and my wife agree that the information provided to us was extremely valuable and sometimes comforting. Apart from the medium of communication, AmmiTips is very similar. Not only can it save lives and help reduce infant mortality in Pakistan, as a business, it has all the characteristics of viability.
Congratulations to Asad Soorty, Sabina Tomkins, Sumer Mohammed, Taymoor Khan and Umar Chaudhary for hashing this amazing service in less than 40 hours. I have high hopes for AmmiTips, it might actually win the finals.
