Community health workers in India and Uganda are to be armed with smartphones and tablets that use data analytics, risk maps, and social media trends help to save the lives of mothers and their babies.

Axar.az reports citing Reuters that the $100 million projects, backed by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, and others, will be extended to 10 countries in all and aims to prevent the premature deaths of 6 million women and children by 2030.

The plan is to give frontline health workers inexpensive data analytic tools to help them gather the intelligence they need to focus on communities and families most at risk, said Raj Shah, president of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation that is co-leading the project.

This will include creating real-time risk maps to help health workers be more effective at reaching mothers and children in need and analyzing non-health data such as climate patterns or social media trends to predict and prepare in advance for local disease outbreaks or health emergencies.