Health researchers in Cameroon, led by Dr. Mbah Patrick Okwen (health consultant to the Netherlands Development Organization) have been using EpiSurveyor for the last few years to collect critical data concerning a variety of topics including child nutritional status monitoring, community mutual health organizations, investigating governance at hospitals, and watershed and grazing pastures mapping to reduce water contamination and conflict.  Without the need for any international consultants!

• More than 1300 users have signed up at www.episurveyor.org since June '09 (we're now adding about 120 per month at a pretty constant rate)

• Users are uploading forms from mobile phones at the rate of 10,000 per month and accelerating (see graph)

We here at DataDyne are excited to be teaming up with our Peruvian partners to use MIP technology to support their ongoing efforts to protect the health of children in Peru.

Been working with a variety of groups including HHS and PAHO to develop a system to track available bedspace in healthcare facilities in Haiti, so that clinicians in small clinics who have patients needing a higher level of care. Very, very challenging given that there is no single group that is taking responsibility for tracking something like that.

The GSMA, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, today presented His Excellency Mr. Samuel Poghisio, Minister for Information and Communications for Kenya, with the mobile industry’s prestigious annual Government Leadership Award. The Award recognises the leadership role played by Kenya in extending the benefits of mobile technology to more consumers by cutting tax on mobile phones and information communication technology (ICT) equipment and promoting the early roll-out of mobile broadband.

The GSMA, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, a charity that supports women entrepreneurs published 'Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity'. The details of the report were reported by Forbes in this article.

Some of the interesting findings from the report include:

From Economist report on social networking, comes this gem from a former Facebook employee:

“The people at Facebook are essentially utilitarians . . . They want to give people the very best technology for sharing and then get out of their way.”

So the U.S. Chief Technology Officer today announced a "free mobile health service for pregnant women and new mothers."  The system, text4baby, allows moms to receive text messages about baby health on their phones.

Terrific posting at Mule Design Studios about "the failure of empathy", specifically the empathy of tech people for what real people really want:

Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT's Tech Review magazine was at my panel at Davos today (well, not MY panel: really Eric Schmidt's panel), and we chatted afterwards. Saw him again at an MIT function later on and he pointed me to his blog entry on the panel discussion.