Maternal and Child Health Handbook App 'Boshimo' Launched in Ando Town, Nara Prefecture!

The maternal and child health handbook app 'Boshimo', operated by Boshimo Co., Ltd., has been introduced in Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, and began service on Wednesday, April 1, as 'Kosodate App Ando'. Under the basic philosophy of a 'comforting town where children are born and raised healthily', Ando Town is promoting town planning where all residents support childcare and everyone can live with peace of mind, so that children can grow up healthily with dreams and hopes. This time, 'Boshimo', which allows data from the paper maternal and child health handbook to be recorded digitally and has been adopted by over 830 municipalities, was selected. It began operations based on the Children and Families Agency's policy (*1) of utilizing the electronic version of the maternal and child health handbook and promoting maternal and child health DX. 'Boshimo' is an app that easily supports managing vaccination schedules, health checkup results, and distributing local information via smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Because data is stored in the cloud, it serves as a backup in case the maternal and child health handbook is lost due to disasters, and it also supports continuous use when moving to other municipalities or changing mobile devices, ensuring it can be used with peace of mind. ◆ Launching 'Boshimo' in Ando Town, Nara Prefecture, which boasts comprehensive childcare support to ease parents' anxieties! In Ando Town, when support for housework or childcare is needed, specialized visiting support workers visit homes to prepare meals, clean, do laundry, and support childcare under the 'Child-rearing Household Visit Support Project'. This reduces the burden of daily life and leads to an environment where people can raise children with peace of mind. Furthermore, 'Kirarie' has been opened as a space where infants and their parents can casually gather, play, and interact. Through diverse childcare support programs like parent-child events, parents and children can deepen their interactions. It also serves as an initiative where parents can consult midwives, public health nurses, and nursery teachers about their childcare worries, preventing childcare households from becoming isolated and connecting them to necessary support. To allow child-rearing households to utilize the town's initiatives more conveniently, 'Boshimo' was adopted as a new tool for disseminating childcare information. ◆ Solidly supporting pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare with a community-based childcare app! 'Kosodate App Ando', adopted by Ando Town, is a service compatible with smartphones, tablets, and PCs. It is packed with convenient functions to help busy mothers and fathers, such as recording and managing the health data of expectant mothers and children, managing vaccination schedules, providing advice on childbirth and childcare, sharing functions with family members like grandparents living far away, and notifying regional information distributed by the town. The 'I Did It Anniversary', which can be used as a childcare diary, was created based on the Children and Families Agency's maternal and child health handbook format examples. It can record anniversaries related to developmental stages and childcare, including the 'Parent's Record' of the handbook, along with photos and messages. It also serves as a benchmark for children's growth and development. Furthermore, even when social environments change due to the impact of infectious diseases, the app can instantly deliver important information such as alerts from the local government and advice from public health nurses to those who need it via text or video, supporting the creation of an environment where childbirth and childcare can be carried out with peace of mind even in emergencies.