April 30, 2008

EpiSurveyor health data software recognized for contribution to ICT for development

WASHINGTON, DC (June 5, 2008) – DataDyne.org announced today that it won the 2008 Stockholm Challenge Award for Health. The Stockholm Challenge awards have as their goal “to help counteract social and economic disadvantage, wherever it occurs, by promoting the use of ICT for development.”

“Mobile phones, along with the internet, have the power to revolutionize access to information throughout the developing world. By creating a free, open source health data collection program that operates on mobile devices, EpiSurveyor is lowering the barriers to collection of vital health data, and reducing reliance on outside consultants,” said Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne.org.

DataDyne's Joel Selanikio and Rose Donna celebrate in Stockholm

The EpiSurveyor health data collection program was developed by DataDyne.org with funding from the United Nations Foundation-Vodafone Group Foundation Technology Partnership.

Through the UNF-VGF Partnership, EpiSurveyor was successfully piloted by the World Health Organization and national Ministries of Health in Kenya and in Zambia . Based on those successes, the WHO announced that it intends to make EpiSurveyor a standard for health data collection in Sub-Saharan Africa, with details to be announced soon.

“Recognition from the Stockholm Challenge of DataDyne.org’s contributions to the field of mHealth, and also international public health more generally, is a strong validation of the importance of this work. We are also seeing this validation from the countries where EpiSurveyor is being used, with World Health Organization’s Expanded Programme on Immunization in Kenya, for example, recently investing $150,000 in its mobile health data collection program in order to further expand its application to the country’s various health needs,” said Claire Thwaites , Head of the UNF-VGF Partnership.

Dr. Selanikio and Ms. Donna receiving the award in Stockholm.