One of the partners in India: Dr. Carolin George of Bangalore Baptist Hospital working in an urban slum in Bengaluru

A richly diverse group of Baylor researchers has teamed up through the Baylor Social Innovation Collaborative (BAY-SIC) and made substantial progress on efforts to tackle various “wicked problems” in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), India. Building on the Louise Herrington School of Nursing’s ongoing partnership with Bangalore Baptist Hospital, a healthcare facility that works in over 1700 rural villages and 12 urban slums, Shelby Garner (Nursing), Hope Koch (Management Information Systems), Julia Hitchcock (Art), and Phil Young (Management Information Systems/Statistics) have designed platforms to provide patient health education and improve health outcomes through the combination of mobile health (mHealth) technologies and virtual reality simulation for predominantly illiterate and

impoverished populations. Alongside Bangalore Baptist Hospital, the Baylor team seeks to reduce rates of hypertension and diabetes, two increasingly prevalent non-communicable diseases in India. In addition, the team is hopeful that its experimentation could lead to the creation of new models of mHealth technology that could be translated to populations outside of India and apply to a variety of healthcare needs.

Three of the partners at Baylor: Hope Koch, Phil Young, and Shelby Garner

Thanks in part to BAY-SIC funding, this newly formed partnership among Baylor researchers has quickly led to recognition: the team’s mHealth India Proposal has advanced to the second round of competition for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Grant on Improving Urban Health in Asia, which will take place in Bangkok, Thailand in May.