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:

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.

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:

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):

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.

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.

This is the theme of this year Malezi Bora Week in Kenya.Its a bi-annual activity where health workers intergrate all the intervention aimed at improving the lives of the mother and child.The first phase Malezi bora activity will run  from 3rd-15th ,May 2010 while the second phase will be held between 1st-12, November 2010.