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!

This is exactly why we created EpiSurveyor: so that researchers like Dr. Okwen could do the kind of data collection they need to do in order to address local problems as only local people can -- without the need for expensive consultants or software contracts.  Dr. Okwen is a health expert not a computer engineer, but he has been able to create his own mobile data collection systems using EpiSurveyor with only an occasional tech support email to our excellent staff in Nairobi.  We did not need to train Dr. Okwen or his staff. We did not need to fly to Cameroon. We did not need to conduct a training, or a boot camp, or a conference. We just needed to create a tool so flexible and simple that Dr. Okwen could use it without us.

Because EpiSurveyor is so affordable (free, in this case) and so simple to use ("like Gmail for data collection"), Dr. Okwen can concentrate on public health and not waste time worrying about technology.  We're incredibly proud to be able to help folks like this who are doing this kind of real, impactful public health research.

Note that Dr. Okwen did all this with the Palm PDA version of EpiSurveyor, and is now poised to start using the mobile phone version.

Below are some photos sent by Dr. Okwen and his team: