Tech for Change
Hosted by the United Nations Foundation-Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, the "Tech for Change" blog shares insight and experiences from the frontlines of innovative mobile technology use in support of United Nations and other humanitarian work worldwide.
Friday 12 September 2008, 4:03 PM
Using mHealth to Promote Development in Africa
My name is Awa Dieng, and I work for DataDyne.org, a public health and technology organization that has created software called EpiSurveyor for health data collection.
My job involves traveling to sub-Saharan African countries to train doctors and health worker in the use of EpiSurveyor. I never thought that I would be working on data collection, or even health, but that’s where life has led me.
I have a little bit of a technical background, but have always had a strong interest in working for an organization that is doing something to help development in Africa’s sub-Saharan region. I’m originally from there – from Senegal.
Most of our work is focused in sub-Saharan Africa, where many of these countries had previously been collecting data on paper –if they had been collecting data at all.
When data is collected on paper, it takes a very long time and it also produces a lot of errors. And if the data is from a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a huge country with 26 provinces, you can imagine how difficult it is to transfer the data from each province to the central office where somebody has to key-in all that data.
The software we are using helps to eliminate this process of data entry because it has already been entered into the mobile device that was used to collect the data. All that has to be done is to synchronize the mobile device to send the data to a computer and then e-mail the data to the central office for analysis.
The benefit of this mobile technology is that it not only reduces data entry errors tremendously, but it also makes the work of data collection go much faster. This is important because without good health data, you don’t know what is going on in a country--if there is an outbreak somewhere, you don’t know that it is happening.
The data we collect is intended to be used by the UN World Health Organization, but it also helps the national ministry of health because it gives them reliable information that was not available before.
I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. This is way beyond what I expected to do and I’m just glad to be part of an organization that’s making a difference. I can’t wait to see what we do next.
--
Awa Dieng, a program officer at the nonprofit consultancy DataDyne.org, is using mobile technologies to improve public health with the support of the UN Foundation-Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership's Mobile Health (mHealth) for Development program. The mHealth program also works closely with the UN World Health Organization and national Ministries of Health. For more information, visit www.unfoundation.org.
My job involves traveling to sub-Saharan African countries to train doctors and health worker in the use of EpiSurveyor. I never thought that I would be working on data collection, or even health, but that’s where life has led me.
I have a little bit of a technical background, but have always had a strong interest in working for an organization that is doing something to help development in Africa’s sub-Saharan region. I’m originally from there – from Senegal.
Most of our work is focused in sub-Saharan Africa, where many of these countries had previously been collecting data on paper –if they had been collecting data at all.
When data is collected on paper, it takes a very long time and it also produces a lot of errors. And if the data is from a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a huge country with 26 provinces, you can imagine how difficult it is to transfer the data from each province to the central office where somebody has to key-in all that data.
The software we are using helps to eliminate this process of data entry because it has already been entered into the mobile device that was used to collect the data. All that has to be done is to synchronize the mobile device to send the data to a computer and then e-mail the data to the central office for analysis.
The benefit of this mobile technology is that it not only reduces data entry errors tremendously, but it also makes the work of data collection go much faster. This is important because without good health data, you don’t know what is going on in a country--if there is an outbreak somewhere, you don’t know that it is happening.
The data we collect is intended to be used by the UN World Health Organization, but it also helps the national ministry of health because it gives them reliable information that was not available before.
I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. This is way beyond what I expected to do and I’m just glad to be part of an organization that’s making a difference. I can’t wait to see what we do next.
--
Awa Dieng, a program officer at the nonprofit consultancy DataDyne.org, is using mobile technologies to improve public health with the support of the UN Foundation-Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership's Mobile Health (mHealth) for Development program. The mHealth program also works closely with the UN World Health Organization and national Ministries of Health. For more information, visit www.unfoundation.org.
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