Tag: SMS

When I graduated college two weeks ago, I thought I was done taking classes for a while. Yet, instead of hanging out with friends, finishing season 4 of Arrested Development on Netflix, or even going for a run, I spent my first weekend in DC back in a classroom.

Early Saturday morning, I joined Nick Martin, CEO, at George Washington University to assist him in teaching a two-day, graduate level course on using technology for crisis response and governance. This wasn’t your run of the mill course though. Rather than introducing theorists with lofty ideas, abstract from the reality of disasters on the ground, Nick crafted the course as a realistic, hands-on approach.

As a fun beginning to the day, Nick broke the students into small groups to learn how to use Twitter. Tasked with creating accounts that impersonated celebrities, some of the students crafted hilarious Tweets and interactions. Among my favorites:

From there, we examined a series of potential solutions for crisis response. We considered how mobile phones could be used to collect and analyze data, how we could use CrowdMap and OpenStreetMap to visualize data and dynamically respond to changing geographies, and how social media could be leveraged in conflicts to raise money or locate survivors. This overview of the different platforms allowed us to focus on both the benefits of each solution and, more importantly, the limitations.

The second day of the course featured more hands on implementation of technologies and zombies.

Yep. Zombies.

In this simulation, we were preparing for an inevitable invasion of zombies in Washington, DC. New York City had already fallen, so the students had to design and implement plans for both alerting citizens of the apocalypse and ascertaining how prepared they were. By trying to implement tools such as FrontlineSMS, Magpi, Open Data Kit, and FormHub in a disaster scenario, it quickly became apparent that certain tools were preferable for certain scenarios. For instance, while FrontlineSMS would be fantastic for disseminating information, it would be challenging to run a survey on it. Open Data Kit and Magpi work wonderfully if you have an Android phone, but falters on an iPhone. Formhub, while offering both an Android app and a web-based form, can only accept surveys created in a .xls file type—definitely not prohibitive, but it does require an extra layer of expertise.

After we saved the world, or at least DC, from zombies, we explored a few tools in the sector of finance, health, and governance. Among the highlights for me were m-Pesa, a fascinating mobile-based money transfer system started in Kenya; MAMA, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, which sends valuable information to pregnant women concerning caring for their child; and CrowdHall, a rethinking of the town hall meeting for the digital age.

Both the breadth and the depth possible in these two days impressed me. The number of tools we used demonstrated the tremendous advances and potential of technology to address crises as they arise. Despite my belief that I could avoid a classroom for a few years, exploring these potential solutions was the best possible foray back into education.

If you’re interested in learning more about how technology can support peacebuilding and conflict management programming, check out TC109: Technology for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, being taught by TechChange’s Director of Conflict Management and Peacebuilding Programs, Charles Martin-Shields!

photowide

Social technology has captured the interest of emergency responders, peacebuilders, and policy makers due to the positive role it has played in disaster response in Haiti, peace promotion in Kenya, social revolution across the Middle East.  In ways that differ from disaster response, though, the politics and narratives of violent conflict demand a more nuanced, risk-averse approach to bringing high-volume communication technologies to the peace making space, especially in kinetic environments.

Emergent technologies such as mobile phones, social media and open-source mapping have had dramatic positive effects on emergency response since Ushahidi was first launched as part of the response to the Haiti earthquake in 2010.  While the emergency response community has embraced these technologies (more or less), the peacebuilding and conflict management communities have been more circumspect.  While there are good reasons for this, at some point a healthy skepticism of these technologies must give way to well thought out integration.  So how do peacemakers in both large organizations and small NGOs do this, given all the political and socio-economic pitfalls waiting in the conflict and post-conflict space?  What’s a lower risk way that small NGOs and individuals can be instrumental in gathering information that can be useful to large organizations like the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations?

To answer this question we can look to the way that narratives and information evolve in multidimensional peacebuilding contexts.  The days of peacekeepers demarcating an agreed upon line between two parties are over – peace is being built in the middle of ongoing warfare, which means providing humanitarian aid, supporting economic development, and building political structures the can (ostensibly) represent citizens.  The information we need to do this can’t just come from satellites, closed-source intelligence and surveillance systems.  Virginia Page Fortna notes the importance of what the ‘peacekept’ need and want, and we have to reach out to them using channels they have access to.  Even in the hardest conflict zone, people have mobile phones to send SMS messages, they tweet, and they build live digital maps to track events.  This isn’t a replacement for classic closed source technology, it’s a supplement to make sure peacekeepers know what is on their host community’s mind, what people need, and their sentiments about the social and political space.

What communication technology and social media does is provide more individuals with the ability to tell a story.  These stories may be the same as the official account, or may deviate jarringly and in ways that make understanding the motivations of those involved in the fighting (or civilians trying to survive) harder to decipher.  In this space we see a key different between social media and communication technology in a disaster versus a conflict zone, and making the most of the technology requires recognizing this difference: in a disaster we use technology to respond to the situation, in a conflict we have to use it to understand the situation.  While the volume of stories can seem overwhelming if we can learn to listen more efficiently to the information from those we wish to help their stories can start to inform and increase the effectiveness of our peacebuilding efforts.

 

In preparation for our upcoming course on Mobile Phones for Public Health, we wanted to share our most recent attempt to blend compelling narration with informative animation. In this short clip, Laura Walker Hudson of FrontlineSMS shares insights on why SMS offers new opportunities in every conceivable area of social change work.

How’d we do? What do you think? Would love to hear your comments below.

This piece has been crossposted from Health Unbound. If you’re interested in learning more, please visit our course page on mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health.

On November 14th the Mobile Phones for Global Health Online Certificate course officially kicks off and as we head into the final countdown we are offering a special preview of what participants can expect from the four-week course!

With 75 feedback surveys completed (thank you to all those who participated) we identified some of the most well-known thought leaders in the field speaking throughout the course.  Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with leading applications developers, and learn from practitioners who have had significant experience in implementing mobile phone based communication systems around the globe. The agenda will include:

Weekly Course Topics:

  • Week 1: Introduction to Mobile Health
  • Week 2: Strengthening health systems
  • Week 3: Moving towards citizen-centered health
  • Week 4: Technology Standards & Interoperability and Learning from other mServices

Featured Speakers:
Patty Mechael, Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance will provide students with an engaging introduction to the field, discussing the evolution of mobile phones for international health, and how these technologies are being used to today to respond to some of the greatest global health challenges.

Kicking off week 2, Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne, will present on the development of Episurveyor, and how mobile phones are being used to collect, manage, and sort data.

Also in week two, the class will be joined by Isaac Holeman, Chief Strategist for Medic Mobile, who will engage with students on the range of open source applications in the Medic Mobile toolkit – including the well-known Frontline SMS system that allows computers to send messages to large groups of people at a low cost.

A number of other guest speakers and presenters will also be featured. Stay tuned as we get closer by checking the course landing page.

In addition to these guest speakers, participants will engage with case studies, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises, and live demonstrations of such tools as interactive voice recognition (IVR),  SMS (text message) communication programs, smartphone applications, and health information systems for data collection and management. Through this combination of hands-on experience, and engagement with practitioners on the ground, the goal is to provide students with an in-depth introduction to the field of mHealth.

Participate in the Live Twitter Chat and YOU Could Win 2 Free Passes!

Leading up the course, the mHealth Alliance and TechChange will provide an opportinity to for individuals to win a free pass to enroll in the course! Together TechChange and the mHealth Alliance will host a live-Twitter chat from @techchange and @mHealthAlliance using #tc309 on Friday, October 26 at 1pm EDT.

During the chat we will engage all participants in a variety of discussion topic and questions related to mHealth. We’re eager to hear from you about questions that you may have on latest innovations and projects in the field. All participants in the twitter chat will be included in a drawing to win a free seat in our upcoming course: mHealth Mobile Phones for Public Health. We will give a away a total of 2 seats. More details to come but tweet at @techchange or @mHealthAlliance if you have questions, and we look forward to having you join us there!

Text to Change’s Chief Technology Officer, Marcus Wagenaar, sat down with me yesterday to discuss new projects on the horizon and innovations in the mHealth field.  Text to Change is an international NGO which uses technology for social change, or as Marcus puts it, “not just a tech company.”  Instead, outreach is where Text to Change works. As the knowledge bearers about mHealth systems and needs, they help design, conceptualize, manage and analyze outreach and projects with their implementing partners to address gaps in healthcare systems and information.

I asked Marcus to talk a bit about some of his favorite projects:

m4rh

Mobiles for Reproductive Health (m4rh), in collaboration with FHI, uses SMS and web based software to send targeted messages about reproductive health.  The user gets their first message and is given 1-3 options for response, such as “if you want more information about condoms, text back 001.” They are then inside a tree of responses win which they can navigate back and forth and discover new information.  The project has been running in Kenya and Tanzania for over a year with pilots in Ghana and Rwanda underway. FHI provides the content and updates, Text to Change runs the IT backend in each country, all from Kampala.

m4rh is one of Marcus’ favorites because it’s “inherently scalable, once it’s set up anyone can access it for free by texting the first keyword to get the main menu” and it’s the “perfect example of Text to -Change because it provides people with information to make informed choices about their lives. In situations where information is lacking or inaccurate around sensitive issues of reproductive health, m4rh allows people to access information that can give them more control over their lives.  They still make their own decisions but at least they have all necessary information to make an informed choice.”

As example of its popularity; in May 2012 more than 40 thousand people have accessed the M4RH information service in Kenya alone. The specific information people access in the system is analyzed. Also, SMS surveys amongst users are carried out to enable deeper analysis of behavioral patterns. By combining this information various things can be deduced. Examples are: which contraceptives are popular in which age groups, what are the differences in male and female use of the system, are the choices people make influenced by the system, etc. These research results or not yet in the public domain but have been shared at various mHealth conferences and we hope to be able to share the results with a wider audience in the near future.

Medical Male Circumcision

The Medical Male Circumcision project, in partnership with Jhpiego in Tanzania and potentially Uganda, is a service hat sends information, similar to m4rh, as well as supporting patient recovery.  Individuals in the beneficiary population get messages regarding where they can receive Medical Male Circumcision and why it’s important, such as “Male circumcision can reduce the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission by 60%”.  After surgery, patients receive messages as soon as the surgery is complete regarding what to expect during their recovery. The Medical Male Circumcision project provides a Virtual Nurse who advises patients: “Make sure that you do not have sex for the first two days,” for example, or later on in the recovery “if your urine is discolored, visit the clinic.” The messages are “specific but lighthearted” with quiz questions every week to engage the patients and to assess how much they know about Medical Male Circumcision. Messages are meant to be encouraging and a “positive way to ensure recovery,” reduce stress, and “decrease health costs overall” by addressing concerns before they become serious health issues.

Text to Change monitors how many people they reach with their messages, how often they are reached, and how much it costs to reach a person. Researchers were able to show a statistically significant association between those men who texted in to the toll-free number asking where male circumcision was available and those who actually followed through and got circumcised. This is a good example of providing people with information to help them making informed decisions about their own health.

Data Collection

The data collection project is in the pilot phase with the Center for Disease Control in Tanzania within the mHealth Alliance. The project targets mothers after they have delivered and will speed up data collection about Vertical or Mother-to-Child-Transmission (MTCT) of HIV.  Currently, midwives and nurses fill in registers for mothers and babies to track their data by hand.  The individual patient data is rarely analyzed and often inaccessible to researchers and government representatives so that today there is no reliable number for the transmission rate for MTCT in Tanzania.  This Data Collection tool pilots a new form for tracking MTCT data, where healthcare workers take data from the standard register, write it on a worksheet and then copy it line by line and send it to a central location using SMS.  The data collected will allow the CDC to calculate the transmission rate for the first time in Tanzania and will enable impact evaluation of interventions that aim to lower the number of Mother to Child Transmission of HI, which is part of the Millennium Development Goals.

I also asked Marcus to give a window into exciting innovations in the pipeline:

FormHub              

FormHub is an Open Source initiative by Columbia University.  Text to Change is working with Columbia to develop and use their platform in the field. Text to Change is currently implementing this technology with one of their partners. The partner will conduct a survey in Uganda’s Luwero District, interviewing 1000s of teachers and students in secondary school about physical abuse, sexual abuse, living conditions, and emotional and physical wellbeing of children.  This is the first ever large-scale survey about these sensitive issues performed in Uganda. The partner designs the survey questions, Text to Change enables easy data collection using mobile technology and the formhub platform. Using cheap Android phones, 60 trained Ugandans will carry out the survey using FormHub.

Marcus also wants to use FormHub to automate data gathering in health and medical setting in remote clinics because it’s simple to use for the designer, data collector and data analist and it’s open source.  Many more interesting projects to come!

Vusion

Vusion is a new SMS open source platform development by Text to Change. The backend is based on the Vumi system developed by the Praekelt Foundation.  Marcus sees Vusion as the next big thing in SMS messaging, and here’s why:

  • Vusion is focused on providing a scalable enterprise messaging platform
  • It can connects to multiple telecom companies and aggregators in multiple countries and multiple shortcodes
  • Once Vusion is set up, you won’t need a programmer to design campaigns or access data so it’s easy for non-technical project managers to use without programming skills
  • An API enables access to SMS data from external applications, which enables easy development of for example; advanced real-time data visualizations, website-widgets, twitter integration, etc.
  • Vusion has different access levels and enables organizations to implement and manage multiple SMS programs in parallel from one central platform.

Programmer? You can download Vusion from github and see what the skeleton looks like.

Some of the cost implications of SMS projects are annual dedicated shortcode fees and aggregator costs.  Vusion reduces this by enabling shortcode sharing. Users can use the same shortcode for small projects to share infrastructure and still be in full control over their campagins and projects  This is the approach Text to Change has been pioneering for years but Vusion will make it easier for organizations to be more involved in their own campaigns by having full access to their projects and the associated data.

Vusion was launched with an extensive demo on the 15th of June in Amsterdam. There is no recording of real-live demo but an accompanying presentation is available on slideshare.

Interested in learning about Mobiles for International Development? Check out our upcoming course, mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health, starting in November. 

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