EpiCollect
Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Nov 05, 2009
A few weeks ago, the Open Mobile Consortium and MobileActive.org hosted the first Open Mobile Camp. Discussions focused on open source mobile development and how mobile tools can and are being used in humanitarian work. Here are two profiles of interesting projects that were presented at the Camp.
Humanitarian FOSS Project: POSIT
The Humanitarian FOSS Project (H-FOSS) offers summer internships for undergraduate computing students who want to get involved in building free and open source software for humanitarian organizations. As part of H-FOSS, students from Trinity College designed a phone-based tool for search and rescue missions, scientific field-work, and other applications. Called POSIT (Portable Open Search and Information Tool), the application runs on the Android platform. In this video, H-FOSS project director Trishan de Lanerolle and Trinity College students Prasanna Gautam and Christopher Fei present POSIT.
Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Sep 29, 2009
EpiCollect data sheet 6107 Views
Organization that developed the Tool:
Problem or Need:
Epidemiologists and ecologists often collect data in the field and, on returning to their laboratory, enter their data into a database for further analysis. The recent introduction of mobile phones that utilise the open source Android operating system, and which include (among other features) both GPS and Google Maps, provide new opportunities for developing mobile phone applications, which in conjunction with web applications, allow two-way communication between field workers and their project databases.
Brief Description:
Data collected by multiple field workers can be submitted by phone, together with GPS data, to a common web database and can be displayed and analysed, along with previously collected data, using Google Maps (or Google Earth). Similarly, data from the web database can be requested and displayed on the mobile phone, again using Google Maps.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
- GPS and Google Maps data plotting
- Easy to share data with multiple researchers
Main Services:
Voting, Data Collection, Surveys, and Polling
Program/Code Language:
Java/Android
Javascript
PHP
Organizations Using the Tool:
Handsets/devices supported:
Reviews/Evaluations:
TreeHugger.com http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/epicollect-app-for-android-puts-laboratories-on-phones-your-phone.php
EpiCollect Research Paper http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006968
Is the Tool's Code Available?:
Is an API available to interface with your tool?:
