A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
Mobile researcher Andi Friedman just presented the results of his survey of the MobileActive '08 attendees. He showed us a Google map mashup using the dialing code of attendees to show where they come from, and there are people here from every continent but Antarctica. South Africa heads the list and Zimbabwe is in second place.
Other facts: 65% of attendees are NGO's, if attendees had $1 million to spend on a mobile application for social change the top sectors they'd choose to bulid it for are education and health, with government in last place.
Unsurprisingly, 0% of attendees don't own a mobile.
Yesterday I attended the session "OpenRosa mHealth in Tanzania" presented by Gayo Mhila and Neal Lesh. Gayo told us about CommCare, an OpenRosa mobile data collection application which enables community health workers (CHWs) to easily collect patient data through their mobiles. OpenRosa is a consortium for mobile data collection and decision support.
Community health workers serve poor, rural populations, promote preventative care, convey health information, and collect data. Their challenge in being able to use applications such as CommCare include limited network coverage, the fact that it's hard to charge phones in rural areas (solar charger, anyone?), airtime management of personal calls in the case of granted airtime, and understanding of technology.
I asked Gayo about how the CHW's found patients to survey, especially since privacy is such an issue for the population with HIV and TB. He said that health workers direct patients to go to the NGO to get help, so it is their initiative to work with them.
Another audience member mentioned how complicated navigation on donated cellphones was an issue in her project.
It's amazing working with a team of African student citizen journalists to document MobileActive '08. Students are from CSDF and Rhodes University and are from countries including South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia. Blogging of sessions was divided up according to a students' particular interest in gender or democracy or citizen journalism. They're certainly getting a lot of on-the-job training, and MobileActive is lucky to have their perception and insight.
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Ben Freda Consulting