Technology

Home
Technology

Humanitarianism, meet technology

If you're living in an industrialized country, the chances are, when you go to the doctor, you kind of just take for granted all the humming machines that keep track of your health, provide you with the care you need, and instantly convey information about your medical history.

Now imagine you need medical care in, say, Somalia, or Sri Lanka, or DR Congo.  All those fancy gadgets start to seem a lot more important.  It's a tragic perversity of the technological revolution that those who most desperately need advanced medical attention often have the fewest tools at their disposal to provide it.

The UN Foundation has partnered with the Vodafone Foundation and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to create the Humanitarian Technology Challenge to identify the most pressing technological gaps facing humanitarian workers in the field. The three major needs they've identified:

  • Reliable Electricity - Availability of power for electronic devices
  • Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices -- Capability of exchanging data among remote field offices and central health facilities.
  • Patient ID Tied to Health Records - Maintain consistent patient records, including when patients visit different clinics and when they relocate.

Providing humanitarian relief in conflict zones is, as I've previously articulated, not easy. Figuring out how to improve technological infrastructure will not solve all of the problems of providing health care in dangerous areas, but it will undoubtedly save lives.

(If you're in the DC area on June 1-2, you should consider registering your interest in attending the Humanitarian Technology Challenge conference -- where these big questions will be asked, discussed, and, hopefully, answered.)

Get your -ollywoods straight

Question: Where are the top three movie-producing industries in the world?

Hint: Yes, they all end in "-ollywood," and, yes, one of them is in fact Hollywood.

Answer: But the United States' vaunted movie machine is not first, as lovers of Indian "Bollywood" flicks surely know. Nor, however, is it even second any more. According to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Nollywood has moved into the runner-up position. (That's the moniker for Nigeria's film industry, for those less well-acquainted with the global distribution of -ollywoods.)

What's more, it wasn't even close. Nigeria produced more than 400 more feature-length films than the U.S. in a year, and, even if fewer people have seen them, it's still an impressive cultural achievement. As UNESCO's Director-General puts it, with only a touch of bombast:

Film and video production are shining examples of how cultural industries - as vehicles of identity, values and meanings - can open the door to dialogue and understanding between peoples, but also to economic growth and development.

And as in other economic and cultural arenas, if the U.S. wants to keep up, it will have to acknowledge and interact with the burgeoning industries in the rest of the world.

(image of a sampling of Nollywood movies, from flickr user mtrank under a Creative Commons license)

The Economist on mHealth

I was pleased to see the Economist take on the issue of the burgeoning intersection between health care and mobile technology in the developing world (the article features a report co-sponsored by the UN Foundation, detailing dozens of examples of the use of "mHealth" technology).  The article is informative and helpful to the cause, but I couldn't help be put off by the angle with which it addresses its subject.  Translated with a mild injection of cynicism, the Economist's hook seems to be along the troubling lines of something like "Bet you didn't think poor Africans could be using technology to improve health care!"

Maybe you didn't.  But the article's lede -- "Can new technologies help to tackle the health problems of the world’s poorest?" -- should not be a "silly question," as the Economist's as always un-bylined authors imply.  Though it goes against the grain of stereotype, many countries in Africa -- think Kenya, even Somalia -- are awash with the decidedly un-magical "modern wizardry" of cell phones.  This is not an issue of "poor people absolutely deserv[ing] better technology" (presumably for Microsoft the West to dispense), as ex-Microsoft and current Gates Foundation head honcho Bill Gates opines.  This is a case of recognizing reality on the ground, and utilizing the best methods to provide better health care to those who need it.

It's hard not to portray this fascinating initiative as the addition of one phenomenon, technology, to another, Africa's poor health infrastructure.  But really, it should be seen as a combination of the two.  Integrating technology with developing health systems will prove the best way to improve the quality, speed, and breadth of coverage on the continent -- not because Africans "deserve" it, but because it works most effectively.

PS. The Economist also links to Mark's discussion of the "insect in a box" torture memos.  Somebody in the UK loves us!

UPDATE: I'd be remiss not to use this opportunity to plug the awesome work of DataDyne, the non-profit sponsored by UNF and the Vodafone Foundation, to utilize mobile technology to aid the collection of public health data.

One Lucky Journo

Jason Palmer from the BBC recently spent some time avoiding sniper fire and being held hostage during the World Food Programme's information and communications technologies (ICT) training -- funded by the Vodafone Foundation and UN Foundation. Count me jealous (see videos below and after the jump). He boils down the importance of the training:

ICT experts are often the first "boots on the ground" after a disaster - and increasingly, aid agency workers are directly targeted. Attacks on the UN offices in Baghdad in 2003 and Algiers in 2007 stand as the starkest reminders that the rules of engagement are shifting.

The #pman Revolution?

Facinating events are taking place in my ancestral homeland of Moldova, a small country nestled between Romania and Ukraine.  The social networking technology Twitter is being used as an organizing tool for massive demonstrations in the captial Chisinau by youth angry over election results that favored the communist party.  Keep in mind Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe with a GDP per capita of about $1,200.   This is not exactly a place where one would expect cutting edge-social networking technology to penetrate so deeply. Still, as Evgeny Morozov  posts (a must-read) there is a demonstrable "Twitter effect" to Moldova's demonstrations.

If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter-driven revolution in a low-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified "no". Today, however, I am no longer as certain. If you bothered  to check the most popular discussions on Twitter in the last 48 hours, you may have stumbled upon a weird threat of posts marked with a tag "#pman" (it's currently listed in Twitter's "Trending Topics" along with "Apple Store", Eminem, and Easter).

No, "pman" is not short for "pacman"; it stands for "Piata Marii Adunari Nationale", which is Romanian name for the biggest square in Chisinau, Moldova's capital...The related posts on Twitter are being posted at a record-breaking rate - I've been watching the Twitter stream for the last 20 minutes - and I see almost 200 new Twitter messages marked with "pman" (virtually all of them in Romanian, with only one or two in English).

Global Voices is on the story as well. Here's some dramatic YouTube footage of the protests.

 

Flying Doctors

Speaking of bed nets, they are not only life-saving (and cost-effective) tools for preventing malaria, they also function in place of high-tech medical equipment.
The green and blue scrubs are the same as on TV, the concentration as intense as in any operating theatre. But beeping high-tech monitors are conspicuous by their absence. In remote areas of Darfur, the ICRC's Flying Surgical Team performs life-saving operations under the shade of a baobab tree, with the simplest equipment. [snip] "We can operate anywhere," says Lizzie [a nurse on the ICRC's Field Surgical Team (FST)], "as long as we can hang a mosquito net. And if we have to, we can just hang a mosquito net between our two trucks." Those of us brought up on TV programmes full of high-tech operating theatres will have trouble imagining a surgeon working under a baobab tree, but that is the usual setting for most of the FST's operations.
Sending bed nets to refugees remains, of course, a good idea. (image from flickr user Rita Willaert under a Creative Commons license)

If You Think Providing Humanitarian Relief is Tough…

...try providing the telecommunications infrastructure on which these humanitarian relief organizations rely, under the imperative of immediate deployment, and all while facing the same privations, complications, and dangers of operating in a conflict zone. Here at UN Dispatch, we've provided consistent coverage of the violence and displacement stemming from conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. We've also from time to time featured the under-heralded work of Telecoms sans Frontieres (TSF), the bold organization that fills the gaping telecommunications hole in societies, like many in eastern Congo, scrambling to recuperate from violent conflict. The resources that TSF provides for displaced persons -- an ability to talk with worried family members, to communicate their location and maintain contact -- are as uplifting as the food, water, and shelter provided by other humanitarian organizations. What's more, though, is that these aid workers themselves rely on the technology that TSF rapidly deploys. And as this email from a TSF employee makes clear, the mandate to fulfill these crucial tasks does not free them from the harsh conditions under which humanitarian organizations must operate in places like eastern Congo:
In the Haut-Uélé [a district in northeastern Congo, on the Sudanese border, where TSF is deployed] alone, there are 135,000 displaced which are regularly facing LRA rebel attacks. In Dungu [TSF headquarters in the region], there are no landlines and the only GSM operator available in the area is not reliable due to regular power failure. There is no electricity so all aid agencies rely on generators. The working conditions are really tough. There is little food including for those working to help the population due to limited supplies linked to the security conditions.
Another photo below the jump, and check out this neat "humanitarian snapshot" of eastern DR Congo.

Texting for Democracy

One reason last Sunday's elections in Ghana went off without a hitch? Cell phones.
The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (Codeo), made up of Ghanaian civil society groups, is using mobile phones to provide what it believes will be a near perfect view of the conduct of the polls and the results. The system works like this: volunteers with mobile phones monitor a representative sample of 1,000 out of some 21,000 polling stations. As voting gets under way, they send text messages containing data on the conduct in their polling station to a toll-free number. A cheat-sheet lists the codes. For example, a text containing "D1" means "ballot box missing". Mobile-based schemes have been used to monitor votes in Indonesia, Montenegro, Egypt and Sierra Leone in recent years, but the developers say Ghana has the most sophisticated version yet deployed. Codeo volunteers hope the SMS-based scheme can be replicated elsewhere to prevent incumbents leaning on electoral officials to bump up their tallies. [snip] After counting finishes at each centre, the monitors send the results via SMS to allow a computerised tally of the outcome. "You can confidently come up with results that are 95 per cent reliable," says Ms Potakey. "It's a big deterrent to politicians because all eyes are watching."
And all fingers are texting. That's democracy.