16. Today there are 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10454065-78.html
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25. CODE Patient ID MUAC (mm) Edema (E/N) Symptoms MUAC +28 105 E V D MUAC> Child +28 Fatimata Diallo F/13M has SAM+. Please bring child in for IMMEDIATE inpatient care. SMS as sent by health care worker: Immediate SMS response received by health care worker:
This is a digital doorway - a low power consuming, open source based computer with three computing stations. It is weather proof and virtually unbreakable. These are children working and learning on the digital doorway.
This is a digital doorway - a low power consuming, open source based computer with three computing stations. It is weather proof and virtually unbreakable. These are children working and learning on the digital doorway. http://www.digitaldoorway.org.za/index_main.php?do=sites
First set of sketches of a portable Digital Doorway
The Bee was designed to provide access to information and education in emergency situations
UNICEF convened top thinkers in ruggedized computing and education for two days in NYHQ to come up with specs and plans for the first prototype, which Seth built in his basement.
Similarly a course called Design For UNICEF, taught at NYU’s Graduate ITP program, brings together skilled graduate students and UNICEF experts. This year one of the designs that came out of the discussion was the Water Canary.
Nothing is more important than working in the field. The Bee was taken back to the environment where the DD had been tested and used for years. And further development was done there (SA)
Population density
66% of africa’s population is now reached by mobile phone signal
This is Makeda. She is one of the hundreds of thousands of children in Ethiopia benefiting from Plumpynut distribution. This is Girma. He is the person responsible for monitoring the distribution of PlumpyNut at the lowest level. This is Rolf. He is the Chief of Supply in Ethiopia and wants to know how much Plumpynut is in stock This is Girma sending his stock report by SMS
This is what Rolf sees on his computer in addis
This is what Rolf sees on his computer in addis
So, the old system - pre RapidSMS is Linear and Unidirectional 1) Community Health Worker (CHW) collects nutritional data 2) The CHW sends the data to the Ministry of Health (MoH) via post (or other) system delivery 3) No feedback to the CHW, caregiver, or child. 4) Data is utilised primarily for long term planning The process we modeled was this, the community health worker, there are very few nurses or doctors, recorded these measurements and then sent them to the government. Unfortunately they did not understand why they took the measurements or use them to diagnose malnutrition but used less accurate methods such as the texture of children's hair.
So the system we put in place looks like this. The health worker enters the data directly into the phone as an SMS. RapidSMS can parse the message, sorting out errors and maps and graphs it, giving the government real-time information it can immediately use to pinpoint problems and react to them. And this is the way Nutritional Monitoring in Malawi works now: 1) Healthcare worker to central SMS system. 2) Central SMS system allows for data visualization - real time - mapping - graphing
Additionally, the data is on the web where UNICEF and other development and humanitarian partners can use it and not just locally but at a country level, a regional level and even a global level, cross-comparing regions and tracking progress. 3) Central SMS system aggregates and sends data to: - government - UNICEF - country office - regional office
The RapidSMS team’s greatest insight came from a suggestion that one of our software developers made. The health workers had not known why they recorded the data before much less been thanked. Why not send a thank you. Then we realized if we sent a thank you, why not send a diagnosis as well. The servers were already doing the calculations.
So the system sent back an SMS with a diagnosis and the health worker was empowered by the information to act to help the children, maybe with daily feedings or just monthly checkups depending on severity. So the act of collecting data was turned into an action which directly benefited the children themselves. 4) So - not only does the system do what it used to do, but faster and better - but it also goes back to the source: the central SMS system feeds back to CHW three things: - thank you (powerful incentive) - No one ever said thank you before! - feedback on accuracy (error in data entry) - critical information regarding status of child (undernourished, etc.) allowing, for the first time, for immediate agency on the part of the CHW The system can directly affect the welfare of children. CHW can share feedback with mother/caregiver
This is what Rolf sees on his computer in addis
This is an example of the training materials we made. The following slides show how RapidSMS could be used for initial assessments in an emergency. The example we are using is of a hypothetical earthquake that has destroyed lots of infrastructure and services for communities. The assumption here is that UNICEF has monitors in the earthquake affected zone and they know what they are supposed to be monitoring and what format / syntax to use
Additionally the system is cost effective to implement, since the health workers already had their own phones UNICEF only had to pay for the cost of training and the cost of the SMS messages themselves.
Nigeria needs to monitor the distribution of 63 million bed nets
First implementation in Lagos, after 7 weeks of dev time, covered 300k nets. 2 local developers were trained and are being hired
