Johannesburg - Pretorian single mother Jacqueline Rogers developed a pregnancy app dubbed, My Pregnancy Journey, to help educate expectant mothers about pregnancy and how to deal with the challenges that may come with pregnancy.
The 41-year-old said she was shocked by statistics on teenage pregnancy and infant mortality rates in the African continent and how many women experience difficulty during their pregnancy journey.
The award-winning app was officially launched in March 2020 but has been available on the app store since 2019.
“During the harsh lockdown period, teenage pregnancies increased by 60%. South Africa is also sitting at 119 000 maternal mortality per year, as teenage pregnancies increase, these numbers will also rise. I want to enable women to understand their pregnancy journey to help reduce these statistics,” said Rogers.
She said that these statistics prompted her to do more research on how much information is available on pregnancy and the contributing factors to the challenges women face during their pregnancies.
“Socio-economic conditions, bad healthcare services and lack of educational pregnancy information are challenges that expectant mothers face across Africa. I founded the My Pregnancy Journey App, to tackle these issues.
“Through research, we also realised that it is not just the social aspect that is a gap in the market, but there is no local tech platform linking the user to local products, services, providers, hospitals, and clinics. We have created a whole digital ecosystem, linking everyone in the industry to one another,” she said.
The My Pregnancy App founder said upon her research she discovered that the only available pregnancy apps did not cater to the African market. And that the only digital solutions available were Short Message Service (SMS), WhatsApp, and Web-based solutions.
“These are the reasons that motivated us to create the educational app. We developed the first comprehensive educational pregnancy app from the African continent. It took us two years to put the app together,” she said.
In 2020, Rogers’ app won the MTN app of the year award, two Huawei app awards for best app and social impact app awards in the same year.
The pregnancy tracking app allows users to customise their app based on their needs and the stage of pregnancy and journal their journey. The app also has a community chatroom for expectant mothers to share their experiences.
“Each user can personalise the app for themselves and use any of the 30 features to track her pregnancy every week. The app uses information provided by the user to determine what stage of pregnancy she is in, and if she does not know her due date, there is a due date calculator,” said Rogers.
The app is currently available in English, but Rogers said there are plans to translate it into other local languages. Rogers said her start-up tech company is 100% women-owned, and her partner is a medical doctor.
“All the content on the app has also been contributed by women who are doctors and specialists in the South African pregnancy industry,” she said.