Staff Blog
What do FrontlineSMS and EpiSurveyor have in common?
Ken Banks, creator of the terrific FrontlineSMS text messaging software, has some great thoughts today on why deep knowledge of on-the-ground circumstances is important to make great software. And he points out that technologists usually have much lower understanding of development problems than the development specialists who've been studying those problems for years, or the on-the-ground folks who have been working on those problems (in health, in agriculture, etc) for years:
Are mobile phones a nutritional supplement?
As we all know by now, mobile phone use is skyrocketing. In Columbia, for example, there are more mobile subscribers per 100 inhabitants than in the US (92 vs 87 as of 2008 data)! And in Africa, about 40% of the population owns a mobile phone – from essentially zero ownership 10 years ago.
There is a lot of talk these days about "mHealth", but there's another way that mobiles are affecting health: as a labor-saving device.
Making mHealth Boring
Just read an article from the Times of India entitled "New tech to keep tabs on disease", where the new tech in question is the collection of data for health on mobile phones.
Datadyne team Field Experience
Last week DataDyne, represented by me, and JSI (Ethiopia team) got to work together in a project in Ethiopia. The purpose for DataDyne visit was:
- Support JSI during their current project.
- DataDyne to have a fill of what actually happens in a field survey and learn from the experience.
- Take note of any problems/issues experienced while using EpiSurveyor
From the visit, we were able to experience some of the problems that users experience on the field. Some of the major problems were:
EpiSurveyor: Truly Global
Thanks to Google Analytics, we're now much better able to see who's accessing EpiSurveyor.org and from where, and this new data confirms what we'd suspected all along (and supports info provided by users during the registration process): EpiSurveyor is truly a global phenomenon.
Have a look at the table, which shows the 30 most common locations from which people log into EpiSurveyor (top left is most common, read down the first column, then down second column, then third):
Moving forward with the MIP SMS project
When I started at DataDyne.org last April, we were just starting to test the MIP. We spent several afternoons sending and logging text messages. Imagine a room full of people talking to our developer via speakerphone and staring deliberately at their cell phones waiting for a
text message to come through.
EpiSurveyor Embraced at University of Nairobi,Kenya
Datadyne and University of Nairobi have started collobaration which aims at promoting mHealth activities within the University and local communities.Saturday 19th/06/2010 marks the turning point as the first batch of lecturers and friends of Naiobi University were trained on EpiSurveyor.
OLPC: ignoring the mobile phone revolution
As reported today by the Associated Press, the One Laptop Per Child project has announced that they are switching to tablet mode. I have never been a big fan of this project, primarily because its main goal -- to produce a $100 laptop -- always seemed to me something that the market would inevitably produce with or without OLPC: consumer electronics manifestly get better and cheaper every year without any charitable intervention.
Out goes Malezi Bora(Intergrated Child Health Week),In comes Monitoring Pandemic Influenza A H1N1 Vaccine, Kenya
Hot on heels of the just concluded malezi Bora week where Supervisors from MOPHs,UNICEF,WHO and other Partners monitored the activities on real time basis.The team conducted a total of 356 Exit Interviews and visited 116 districts during in the last two weeks.
