August 16, 2010 – 3:17 pm
A recent CNN article highlights interesting use of mobile technology in Rwanda, where the government has issued nearly 500 mobile phones to community health care workers in the rural Musanze district. Through a text message, health care workers can register expectant mothers with a local clinic, where doctors track their progress. Subsequent queries, complications or [...]
February 11, 2010 – 1:57 pm
The impressive text message donation response to the deadly Haiti earthquake disaster has resulted in fundraisers throughout the non-profit world analysing relief groups’ experience with mobiles.
To hear a good summary of lessons learnt, listen to the podcast released by The Chronicle of Philanthropy where Wendy Harman, social media manager at the American Red Cross, and Geoff [...]
January 22, 2010 – 11:22 am
The Extraordinaries help people complete micro-tasks for organizations, causes or individuals through mobile phones or web browsers. In response to the Haiti earthquake, they have set up an online service where people can upload, search and identify missing people through pictures and tag people in photos to help in the identification of individuals. Images of [...]
A few weeks back, Nielsen released their Three Screen Report, which measures the viewing habits of Americans in terms of TV, the Internet, and mobile phones. The research showed that while TV viewing is still dominant, online video usage is up by 53% from last year, and the number of people watching video via mobiles [...]
March 17, 2009 – 12:52 pm
We follow with interest and excitement the US Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) use of social media. Some of the new approaches to health promotion include recently launched eCards through which people can send greetings, while sharing health related messages.. they’ve also opened a virtual flu clinic on Whyville.net, a site that explains a wide [...]
We spent yesterday together with the student group from Media Lab, University of Helsinki, with whom we are designing new social media prototypes for WHO’s Health Action in Crisies (HAC). We’re now organized in 3 groups, each focusing on a different layer of emergency communication. Group 1 is looking at enabling communication through ad-hoc [...]
The UN, Vodafone, and the Rockefeller Foundation have formed a new “mobile health” alliance, with the aim of using mobile technology to provide better healthcare worldwide. The three made their announcement at the GSM World Mobile Conference in February 2009, stating they will facilitate global innovation, unite existing projects to improve healthcare using mobile technology and [...]