INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY USED BY HEALTH CARE WORKER (ASHA) of UTTARAKHAND.

Public health is one of the important responsibilities of the state. The health of the citizens significantly affects their economic productivity, their livelihood capacity and adversely affects the local economy. There is a gap in rural and urban healthcare in developing countries. In India, where infant mortality rate (IMR) in rural areas at 82 per 1000 live births is nearly double the number of 45 for urban areas. Government has set up various mechanisms to provide access to the people living in rural and remote areas to quality health services, but many of them are not performing as per the requirements of the rural localities. The efficiency of the rural health service delivery and would impact the quality of rural health care services and explore how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) could be used as a tool to improve the capacities of the local actors; through facilitating the networking with various rural healthcare actors. The present study titled “COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY USED BY HEALTH CARE WORKER (ASHA) of UTTARAKHAND” is being proposed with specific objectives : To study the socio-economic and communication characteristics of Asha worker, To find out the existing knowledge about communication technology among Asha worker. To evaluate the feasibility of the of communication technology used by Asha worker, the study was carried out in two villages of Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand. The study was confined to Health care worker(ASHA), only ASHA worker were selected as respondents. From the outcome of study it was observed that the patients’ perception and evaluation of the healthcare services they received on a scale of 0 to 5 from very poor (0) to excellent (5). In Villupuram people have given and average rating of 3.7 to public healthcare services and 3.3 to private healthcare services. people are relatively more satisfied with the public health services than the private services. The difference in the ratings indicates the public perception of the difference in the quality of healthcare services provided by the public and the private facilities. If the public healthcare facilities are better in terms of availability and effective presence of healthcare personnel with regularity and punctuality, it not only improves the public perception of the quality of services, but also improves the health status and thereby economic status of vulnerable sections of the rural society. The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has lots of potential in improving the overall performance of the public healthcare system. It could transform both quality and access of public health services.