Saxena, CTO, UMENOKI

A New Interactive Way of Providing Physical and MentalSupport for Pregnant Women

Prakhar Saxena, CTO, UMENOKI

[Summary]
Presently, pregnancy and complications related to it are responsible for the death of about 800 women every day or 300,000 women per year worldwide. In Japan, about 33% of the pregnancies are high risk pregnancies, where the woman is over 35 years old, and 1 in 5 women faces depression during pregnancy. Hence healthcare has become of prime importance during pregnancy. However, at present it is very difficult to detect abnormalities related to the health of pregnant women or her baby due to the limited number of maternity examinations. Famileaf is founded with the goal to solve this problem. Our application "hug+u" asks pregnant women to record health information which can be easily measured at home such as blood pressure, weight, and sleep time. This data will then be analyzed along with the medical record from the hospital to give individual personalized advice, this advice is also shared with the partner of the women, hospital and government offices for early intervention. In future, with a huge dataset, factors affecting the physical and mental health of pregnant women can be found out. Moreover, this health data will be stored in a form of electronic record (book), which will be useful in developing countries where maternal examinations are not in common practice. Apart from health tracking, "hug+u" will provide only the most necessary information based on health data, symptoms and physical condition of the women, it will inform the partner through push notification about the condition of the women and will inform about specific support methods.
Our app works similar to "sugoroku" (a Japanese game similar to backgammon) to incentivize women to track their health. Women are rewarded for completing quests, ensuring the input of health data for analysis. Hence Famileaf, together with pregnant women, hospitals, and government, aims to create a society where everyone can give birth at ease.
Our primary market is Japan, and we plan to expand to India, Brazil and South-East Asia later. Japan is a country with one of the highest numbers of women with advanced maternal age. In India, Brazil and South-East Asia (specifically Indonesia), the number of pregnancies are amongst the highest in the world, and constant population growth ensures a huge market to be explored. Team Famileaf is the fellow of second cohort of Kyoto based "Phoenixi" Incubator. The app is created with cooperation with the Gynecology and Obstetrics Department of Kyoto University, Dr. Miho Egawa in particular, as well as with data scientists and doctors from Kyoto University, and our designers cooperated with pregnant women to create the most minimalistic, cute, and interactive design.
Hence, we believe that our application will create a huge positive impact in lives of pregnant women.

[Profile]



Prakhar Saxena
Prakhar hails from India and is currently pursuing his Bachelors in Electronics and Electrical engineering at Kyoto University. He is the recipient of Inspire Scholarship, awarded by the Government of India, and also of MEXT scholarship, awarded by the Government of Japan. He has a keen interest in social entrepreneurship, and was a finalist for Hult prize in Japan. Prakhar has worked as a software engineer for a Kyoto based startup, Demia. Inc. and is fluent in three languages, Hindi, English, and Japanese.