NMHS-2 · Mobile App & Survey Platform

An offline-first mobile app and the infrastructure behind a national survey.

Project
National Mental Health Survey 2 (NMHS-2)
Sector
Government & Public Health Research
Datalk's delivery
Infrastructure, backend, field application and support while the survey was live

Flagship programme:Technology partner

National Mental Health Survey 2 (NMHS-2)

We built the technology behind the world's largest psychiatric epidemiology survey.

250,000+Interviews with adults and adolescents

36Indian states and union territories

What we built

  • Nationwide survey infrastructure
  • Digitised WHO FLII‑11
  • Multilingual interviews
  • Offline data collection
  • Field‑to‑server sync
  • Central data management

Conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, and funded by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.Conducted by NIMHANS, Bengaluru; funded by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. NMHS-2 programme overview

Discuss Your Survey

Context

Programme context

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, entrusted NIMHANS with planning and conducting NMHS-2. It covered all 36 States and Union Territories and included adolescents aged 13 to 17 alongside adults. It gathered evidence on mental health needs, how they affect people and their families, how services are used and what resources exist for care. Its findings are intended to inform policy and programme planning.

SourceNMHS-2 programme overview

Delivery

Datalk's contribution

Datalk planned and built the complete digital platform for the survey. We were responsible for the infrastructure and backend, the application the field teams used, and the technical support that kept everything running for as long as the survey was in the field. We also digitised the WHO Flexible Interview for ICD-11 (FLII-11) for the survey.

How the field's interviews reached the research team.

  1. Interviews in the field

    Field teams conducted every interview on Datalk's app, which carried the digitised WHO Flexible Interview for ICD-11 (FLII-11) and switched between languages.

  2. Offline first

    Each interview was saved on the device as it happened, so work carried on wherever the network was weak or missing, in every State and Union Territory.

  3. Sync to the server

    Whenever a connection was available, the app synced its interviews to the central server.

  4. Infrastructure and data management

    Datalk planned and ran the infrastructure and central data management for 250,000+ interviews, with technical support throughout fieldwork.

What this experience demonstrates

NMHS-2 demonstrates delivery across the field application, backend, infrastructure and central data management. Its offline and synchronisation workflows are relevant to organisations planning applications for teams who cannot rely on a continuous connection.

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