ASIK: A digital lifeline for children's health in Indonesia
Award-winning application - Aplikasi Sehat Indonesia-Ku (ASIK) - transforms recording and management of children’s health data
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In January 2025, ASIK achieved a remarkable milestone—it won the ASEAN Digital Award, a recognition of its profound impact on children's health across Indonesia. Since its launch in 2022 by the Indonesian Ministry of Health, with support from UNICEF, ASIK has transformed how children’s health records are managed, ensuring the availability of health data of over 48.6 million children across Indonesia.
For years, healthcare workers like Novi Yuliana, an immunization coordinator at a community health center in Banda Aceh, struggled with paper records to capture data — a manual, time-consuming process prone to errors.
In 2022, the Indonesian Ministry of Health, supported by UNICEF, in partnership with the Government of the United States through USAID and the Government of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, set out to change this.
The answer was ASIK—an easy-to-use digital application that health workers could access on their phones or computers. The UNICEF Indonesia Data Team developed ASIK In close collaboration with the Ministry.
"We wanted to make health data reliable and actionable. We designed ASIK by working closely with future users to make sure it met their needs. Our aim was a seamless shift from paper to digital, ensuring health workers could easily adopt the application in their day-to-day tasks," recalls I Made Suwancita, a Technology for Development Officer at UNICEF Indonesia.
Data that saves lives
ASIK was scaled nationally after its successful pilot in the Aceh province in 2022. Haditya Mukri, UNICEF Indonesia Data Centre Officer, recalls those early days: "Seeing the impact in Aceh gave us the confidence to expand nationwide. We knew ASIK would change lives."
Before ASIK, health workers recorded immunization data manually by writing names, dates, and vaccine types in thick registers that could easily be misplaced or damaged. Missing data meant children risked losing access to life-saving vaccinations.
Now, access to real-time information allows for faster responses to address issues like vaccination gaps, helping to ensure that every child gets the protection they need. "I dreamed of a time when ASIK could be used by all healthcare workers, not just those in health centers, so every child’s immunization record is complete and accurate,” reflects Novi. “Healthy children mean a healthy future."
Since its launch in 2022, ASIK has transformed how health records are managed, ensuring that accurate health data for over 48.6 million children across Indonesia is at the fingertips of health workers.
ASIK was first developed to collect children’s immunization data during targeted vaccination campaigns. It has now expanded to also record routine immunization, early detection of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and other health center data. By 2023 the app had gone from regional to national, with over 10,000 health centres (98.5%) now using it.
International recognition
In January 2025, ASIK won the ASEAN Digital Award in recognition of its profound impact on children's health across Indonesia. This is a prestigious award given to organizations, businesses, and individuals who have pioneered innovative products or services and made significant contributions to the digital landscape in the Southeast Asian region.
“We are incredibly grateful for the honour of receiving this ASEAN Digital Award. It is a very important and valuable award, and truly humbling. We express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved, the respective directorate programme coordinators, supporting partners and health workers. We also thank UNICEF for its technical expertise and continuous support in improving and accelerating ASIK implementation across Indonesia. ASIK was developed with the purpose of digitizing community outreach activities at primary health care level, connecting health services for millions of Indonesian people." says Dewi Nur Aisyah, Technical Advisor for Primary Healthcare at the Digital Transformation Office.
In addition to the ASEAN Digital Award, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, which collects and shares good innovative practices, published a case study on ASIK in 2024.
Risdianto Irawan, a Technology for Development Specialist at the UNICEF Regional Office in Bangkok, explains why ASIK is a success story: "UNICEF actively supports its partners’ digital health transformation agenda by leveraging established digital development principles. This collaboration with the Indonesia Ministry of Health to develop the ASIK platform is an example of this and reflects how UNICEF leverages key digital principles such as designing with users, scalability, being data-driven and addressing data privacy and security to ensure that digital solutions advance children’s rights."
