TulaLens: A Yelp-like system for low-income people in developing countries

BOSTON - Dec. 22, 2014 - PRLog -- TulaLens is a Yelp-like system for low-income people in developing countries. These communities can now provide feedback and retrieve crowdsourced information on the organizations that serve them. We recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to scale our work: https://www.indiegogo.com/at/tulalens.

Can you tell me about your proof of concept?: Imagine a pregnant woman having to pay a bribe just to get basic healthcare services. Well, this is what TulaLens often encountered during our pilot. The goal of our pilot was to crowdsource information on the quality of health facilities in Jiyaguda and Mallapur (slum areas in Hyderabad, India) for low-income pregnant women.  In order to do this, we asked these women about their last prenatal care visit and collected information such as wait time, time spent with provider, and the cost of care. We were then able to map out all of the health facilities in an area and determine their quality.  We went back to the same women we originally surveyed and shared the crowdsourced data with them.

This sounds great! Now, what impact did you have?: About 60% of the women didn't realize there were other facilities that provided prenatal care in their area. 25% of women switched to a better facility, 43% advocated for better services at their facility, and 100% of women discussed the information with a family member. One 22-year-old woman who was being forced to pay bribes for care lit up when she learned that she had better options.

And your campaign?:  Now that we have proof of concept, we'd like to scale our work beyond pregnant women to both low-income men and women seeking health services in Hyderabad. We're aiming to reach 1,000 people over the coming months. We want to scale slowly to ensure that we improve upon our social impact as we go. Funds raised through our Indiegogo campaign - https://www.indiegogo.com/at/tulalens - will allow us to do this.