KusiyRed - An mHealth Intervention for Collaborative Care of Perinatal Depression

Mental illnesses represent the highest burden of disease globally, the most prevalent of which is depression. Depression during pregnancy and delivery is very common but usually neglected, although it negatively affects both women and babies. In developing countries, 50% of pregnant women show symptoms of depression and 10-15% have major depressive disorders. Integration of effective screening and treatment services for depression into prenatal care is critical to improving mental health of both mothers and children. Multi-disciplinary team care is the 'gold standard delivery model' for these services; however, this model has not been widely implemented. Another key strategy for supporting the implementation of healthcare innovations is the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), but ICT has not been applied to the treatment of prenatal depression. This project aims to launch KusiyRed, an innovative and scalable integrated electronic health record (HER) for providers, linked to an ICT intervention (using cellphone-based SMS messages for patients) to support the implementation of multi-disciplinary team care for prenatal depression in primary care public health centres in Ventanilla, Peru. Private sector partners (telecommunications and related interests) will be involved to create a business model for this intervention that can support, fund and assure its sustainability within public and private healthcare networks. This project is funded under a collaborative agreement between CONCYTEC (Peru's National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation) and Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada) to support Stars in Global Health innovators based in Peru.