Rockefeller

Berhane Gebru: Disease Surveillance with Mobile Phones in Uganda

Posted by dsasaki on Jul 30, 2008

Berhane Gebru is Program Director at AED-SATELLIFE, an international organization which aims to strengthen health care in resource-poor countries by providing disease surveillance solutions and health information distribution to rural healthcare workers using mobile technology. He took some time out from this week's meeting on mHealth and Mobile Telemedicine to describe SATELLIFE's current project in Uganda which equips rural health workers with PDA's and GPRS wireless access points in order to transmit their health data collection to the ministry of health. We also discuss an upcoming project, currently being field-tested, which would allow those same health care workers to make their disease surveillance reports using simple mobile phones.[Editor's note:  A full case study of AED Satellife's project is written up in our recent report "Wireless Technology for Social Change," commissioned by the UNF/Vodafone Group Foundation Technology Partnership]

At the bottom of the post you can download an audio recording of our entire 20-minute conversation. This is an edited and abridged transcription.

Berhane Gebru