Development and preliminary evaluation of the am akbidmanna mobile application for pregnancy education and monitoring in Darat Sawah Village, South Bengkulu

Abstract

Maternal mortality in Indonesia remains above the global target, while pregnant women in rural areas may experience limitations in access to pregnancy information and continuous monitoring. Although previous studies have reported potential benefits of mobile health applications for pregnancy-related knowledge and independence, evidence regarding locally developed applications that integrate pregnancy education, monitoring, and danger-sign information for pregnant women in rural Indonesian communities remains limited. This study aimed to develop the AM AkbidManna mobile application for pregnancy education and monitoring in Darat Sawah Village, South Bengkulu, and to preliminarily evaluate its content feasibility, media feasibility, usability, and changes in pregnant women’s self-reliance scores. An application development study followed by a pre-experimental one-group pretest–posttest evaluation was conducted among 10 pregnant women selected through total sampling. User needs were identified through interviews with pregnant women, midwives, and community health volunteers, followed by application development, content and media validation, usability testing using the System Usability Scale (SUS), observation of application-use tasks, and measurement of self-reliance before and after application use. Content feasibility was 84.50% (very feasible), media feasibility was 78.00% (feasible), and the mean SUS score was 73.75 (acceptable). The mean self-reliance score increased from 69.80 to 78.10, with a mean difference of 8.30 points and an N-Gain of 0.275 (low category; p = 0.002). All participants could open the application independently, but only seven of ten could independently identify pregnancy danger-sign information. These findings indicate that AM AkbidManna was feasible and usable as a complementary pregnancy education and monitoring medium, while the observed improvement in self-reliance should be interpreted cautiously because of the small sample, short evaluation period, and absence of a control group. Further comparative studies with larger samples are needed to determine its effectiveness and potential contribution to antenatal care outcomes.