instedd.org/news-media/blog/Blog
iLab Latin America + UNICEF Map Social Risks in Haiti
Building on the success of the digital mapping project in Brazil, our iLab Latin America applied … Read more »
Verboice in Cambodia: Using the Power of Voice for Social Impact
Voice is the most universal and inclusive means of communication, and it’s an ideal way to expand the reach and impact of health and humanitarian technologies. In September 2012, with funding from Spider (The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions), the InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia introduced and extended Verboice, an open-source tool which specializes in using interactive voice response (IVR) to support health, safety and sustainable development work. Verboice projects can start small and scale up, making it possible to improve lives even in communities previously closed off by literacy and technological barriers. Read more »
TB Technology in Kenya in 3 Steps
InSTEDD and its partners at Kijani, Population Council, and AMPATH-Kenya are working to design, develop, implement, and evaluate information and communication technologies to improve TB care among people living with HIV. As an initial phase of this project, our team is focused on a TB care reminder system. This reminder system uses information from patient electronic medical records (OpenMRS) to give medical providers the right reminders at the right time about what they can do during each patient visit to improve TB diagnosis and prevention among their patients. Read more »
Barcamp Yangon 2013: A Personal Experience
Last month, my colleague at the iLab Southeast Asia and I were fortunate enough to attend BarCamp Yangon. This was my second time participating in the event focused on spreading ICT knowledge throughout the country. As part of the international network of BarCamp conferences, or rather “unconferences” as organizers refer to it, people from a variety of different backgrounds and geographies come together to create user-generated sessions focused primarily on technology and the web. Read more »
Using Verboice with Skype
A month ago I posted a few tutorials on how to get started with Verboice, our tool to create voice applications (IVR).
The easiest way to test and play with your call flows is to use what we call a “Skype Channel”. This will give Verboice a regul… Read more »
Help Shape our Internship Program
As with all of our activities, we begin with an open mind and proceed with an agile and human centered design process. We believe the most effective programs and technologies are flexible and iterative and are built on joint participation of the communities they are meant to serve. Whether we’re building tools or creating an internship program, our experience has taught us there there is not a one-size-fits-all model for success. Read more »
Verboice Tutorials — Part 1
For the last two years we have been working hard on a new tool called Verboice to simplify the creation of voice-enabled applications.
Verboice is a free and open-source tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and run projects that interact via v… Read more »
The Art of Creating Useful & Usable Tools: Resource Map UX Testing
post written by iLab Southeast Asia Software Developer, Kengsreng TangInSTEDD has an entire platform of free and open source technologies that help people quickly share valuable information around health, safety and development issues. Resource Map i… Read more »
2012: A Year in Review
In the wake of the New Year, we took some time to look back on the dynamic journey we took in 2012. Our activities were characterized by contributions to key global health efforts, engagement in several new projects and the development of important strategic partnerships. Our iLab Southeast Asia and iLab Latin America continued to develop their teams and capabilities as a regional leader for collaborative problem solving. We are delighted to share some of our remarkable achievements of 2012. Read more »
InSTEDD Tools Save the World from the Zombie Apocalypse!
Working in the world of public health exposes us to a number of potentially life threatening scenarios. InSTEDD’s tools are designed to work in high stakes environments where people need to quickly share information, coordinate resources, and align their efforts towards the common goal of ensuring the public’s health and safety. In an effort to create a fun and interactive environment for people to learn how our tools work and how significantly they can improve communications, we teamed up with UC Berkeley to create a public health simulation — using Zombies! Read more »
Saving Lives At Birth with Baby Monitor: An interview with Eric Green
In October of 2011, InSTEDD has been working on Baby Monitor, which is a collaborative project focused on improved prenatal and postpartum screening for mothers and infants in resource-poor environments. Baby Monitor is a tool we created using our interactive voice response technology application, Verboice, in order to bring clinical screening directly to women in the critical period before and after birth to detect complications and take action.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of sitting down with Eric Green, the man who led the Baby Monitor project. Eric eloquently explained how the project began, how it works, what value is being created and what social impact we are striving to achieve. Read more »
Mobile Technology & Community Health Workers: A Game Changer for Global Health? (Part 2)
In a previous post, we explored the potential for linking rural communities to formal health systems by increasing the effectiveness of community health workers (CHWs) through the use of mobile communication technologies. In this post, we will describe some of the open source tools developed by InSTEDD to fill communication gaps encountered commonly in the field. Read more »
Mobile Technology & Community Health Workers: A Game Changer for Global Health? (Part 1)
A good health system delivers quality services to all people, when and where they need them. The exact configuration of services varies from country to country, but in all cases requires a robust financing mechanism; a well-trained and adequately paid workforce; reliable information on which to base decisions and policies; well maintained facilities and logistics to deliver quality medicines and technologies. Read more »
Real Time Collaboration with Resource Map for Android
According to the World Bank, around 75% of the world’s population has access to a mobile phone. As you can see from the image below, this number is significantly increasing over time, especially in developing world countries, such as Cambodia.At In… Read more »
Giving Women a Voice in their Health: Baby Monitor needs your vote!
We are proud that the Baby Monitor project from the iLab Latin America has been selected as a finalist for be one of the finalist for the “She Will Innovate Technology Solutions Enriching the Lives of Girls” challenge! In order for us to win we need your vote so that we can win the $10,000 prize! Read more »
Disease Surveillance in a Mobile and Digital World
We are passionate about using data to surface meaningful insights and improve health outcomes at the community level. Data from disparate systems can be used in an interoperable and interactive way to empower health workers and increase our understanding of local, regional and global disease dynamics. Read more »
Kyla Reid Interview: The Life Saving Potential of Mobile Networks
Imagine that you’re on your way to work one day when a disaster strikes unexpectedly. You’re … Read more »
The Best Way to Learn is to Teach
Thor, the character in an American movie of the same name, is a superhero who carries a hammer that holds the incredible power of thunder. This was the only understanding I had of “Thor”.Recently, while working on Resource Map, I encountered an… Read more »
BarCamp Phnom Penh: Unconference 2012
There is no shortage of conferences focusing on technology, design and innovative thinking. It seems that … Read more »
Working at the iLab Southeast Asia: A personal experience
I first learned about InSTEDD around end of 2008 when I was working with a social enterprise in Cambodia called Digital Divide Data. InSTEDD’s CTO, Eduardo Jezierski along with a consultant from the Argentina based Clarius Consulting company, named… Read more »
Stories from the Field: Malaria Project in Laos
MALARIA IN LAOS Lao PDR is a country with a population of around 6 million people. Most of these people live in hilly terrain and dense forests which makes them particularly vulnerable to Malaria carrying mosquitoes. It is estimated that more than… Read more »
InSTEDD iLab Latin America: Working to Mitigate Social and Environmental Risks in Rio de Janeiro Part 1
We are thrilled to be able to share with you some of the work that the … Read more »
Using Respect & Humility to Improve Health Technology: A CHW Perspective
A Missive from Brooklyn, 2002 In 2002, I got my first job out of college as … Read more »
Stories from the Field: A Local Perspective on the iLab Southeast Asia
A History of Social ServiceI’ve always been drawn to work that gives me the opportunity to help people improve their lives and well being. One of my first experiences working with a non profit was back in 1999. I began working as a volunteer at t… Read more »
The iLab Southeast Asia: Filling the gap between what is needed and what works
FROM TED PRIZE TO COLLABORATION NETWORK Our work in Southeast Asia began in 2007, following Larry … Read more »
VIDEO: Caricia presents on mHealth + HIV at AIDS 2012
mHealth for HIV Treatment & Prevention: International AIDS Conference 2012 At InSTEDD, we’ve been busy collecting … Read more »
An AIDS Free Generation, mHealth, & A Renewed Promise
Last week, over 24,000 delegates from around the world gathered in Washington, DC for the 19th International AIDS Conference. It seemed like everyone was there: President Bill Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, HRH Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Bill Gates, Elton John, Whoopi Goldberg…
Read more »
Creating Tools that Locals Can Shape
Since most of our work is in low resource settings, most of the people who use our technologies have very little education. We call these people “low level users”. Even though these users have little to no education, we still find that us… Read more »
Learning and growing: from my first programming experience to the present
Remembering back to college, when I was first being taught how to program computers with HTML, my teacher demonstrated a web application he had made to calculate electricity expenses by entering the previous and current months’ electric meter number… Read more »
Malaria Day Zero Alert System
The Malaria Day Zero Alert System had the first pilot test in Cambodia on August 1. We are trying to use this new system instead of relying only on the paper based report because we know it has the potential to make reporting more accurate, faster an… Read more »
Behind the Scenes at the iLab SEA: Friday Demos for Agile Software Development
Friday (???????????), both in Khmer and in most Romance Languages convey the same meaning as the “day of Venus”. In Cambodia, Friday marks the end of the work week for most of the foreign companies and organizations.Wh… Read more »
Using Pictures to Facilitate Understanding
Billboards, traffic signs, company logos, instructions, and the other signs are designed with pictures more than text, so that people can easily understand what they mean. Picture help people understand much faster than with text.When people see the ye… Read more »
From idea to product
In day to day working life, one often runs into various kinds of exciting challenges. Life in the iLab SEA is no exception starting from one passionate idea to a grateful finished software product that can solve certain radical human problems in pursui… Read more »
Controlling your Privacy with Health Commons
If you buy into the idea that information about your body is ‘owned’ by you, then it’s obvious you should get to have a say about what happens with that data once it leaves your body. Unfortunately, today there is no clear and easy way to express… Read more »
National Health Systems as a Fabric of Services
At InSTEDD right now we are involved on a wide spectrum of projects. Many of our projects are short and grassroots-driven, such as our recent work with UNICEF using aerial photography to map environmental vulnerabilities in the slums of Rio de Janiero… Read more »
Our Modern Toolkit: Free and Open Source Tools for Social Impact
With social impact being our primary goal, we are proud to share our powerful modern tool belt with the rest of the world. InSTEDD’s suite of open source tools is a collection of technologies that have been used to support our focus areas of maternal/child health, infectious diseases, emergency management and local innovation/leadership.
Read more »
Data: It’s not the technology, it’s about who uses it and how
In the past, we’ve blogged about some of the many lessons we’ve learned when it comes to working on projects that require some form of data collection. As a follow up, we’ve added more of what we’ve learned in the hopes that it will help you better deal with similar situations. Read more »
Rio 2.0 Demo Alley Conference: Building Technologies for Social Impact
Early this month, InSTEDD was fortunate enough to have participated in the USRio+2.0 Demo Alley event held at the Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. Demo Alley, also known as “speed geeking,” follows a similar format as the well known “speed dating” concept where the purpose is to encourage participants to meet a large number of new people and be exposed to a variety of innovative ideas that help bridge the gap between technology and sustainable development. Read more »
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Catalyst for Innovation: How a simple toilet paper roll led to the creation of the Reporting Wheel
Although the Reporting Wheel 1.0 wasn’t very impressive to look at, it represented something much bigger than the sum of its parts. The most important thing about this experience was the fact that all you needed to create innovative solutions was a good idea and the willingness to try something unexpected. Ideas are easy to come by, but the iLabs provide a great way to try them out and see what works and what doesn’t faster than anything else we’ve seen. Read more »
“If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know”: What We’ve Learned and What We’re Doing About It
Since our tools are open source and can be used from any location, we saw that people from New York to Bahrain had discovered that when you design for a constrained environment, the result is simple enough that it’s applicable anywhere else, and ready to roll as soon as the need appears. We intentionally combined our humanitarian mission with smart business acumen so that we could set our first iLab on track to scale and become a financially independent social enterprise Read more »
2011 Reflections: Technologies, iLabs and Accolades
It has been quite the year for our team here at InSTEDD and our innovation labs in Southeast Asia and Latin America. As we prepare to enter the year ahead we wanted to take a moment to look back over a few of our highlights from 2011. Read more »
In Her Own Words: Channe Suy Attends OpenMRS Implementers Meeting
This past October, Channe Suy, product manger at iLab Southeast Asia traveled to Rwanda to participate in the OpenMRS community’s annual Implementers Meeting for five days of collaboration, sharing of implementation experiences and working together to improve OpenMRS. Read more »
January Developer Camp
Developer Camp is a new group activity initiated by ShareVision team for local developer community to have a monthly meeting for sharing knowledge and idea.This group is similar to BarCamp but targeted audience is developer and do it monthly. This acti… Read more »
Dynamic Resource Mapping
iLab team started working on project “Dynamic Resource Mapping” . This project is aim to provide mapping of any facility or resource and be able to update and query the resource availability via SMS, Web interface. The scope of this project is Read more »
GeoChat used by PSI in Laos
PSI had been using SMS communication way to disseminate health messages to their target group about 1000 members. The used to contracted to local telco in Lao telecom to disseminate message for them. Difficulties they encountered were…
Read more »
Malaria Day Zero Alert System Pilot Training
As day-3 reporting model has proved to be an effective mechanism for reporting cases by SMS, and in light of the move towards the elimination of malaria in Cambodia, it has been decided to scale up the system day-0 reporting of all Pf cases from VMWs a… Read more »
Village Volunteers Were trained on how to use TB Lab Result Alert System
After finished training to 5HCs(Speu, Sopheas, Chamka Kaosou, Daun Thy, Chamka Andong) + 1 Lab (Chamkarleu Laboratory) and 10 HCs (Krala, Kien Chrey, Koh Samrong, VihearThom, Peam Chylaing, Koh Roka, Koh Sotin, Peam Prathnous, Moha Khnoung, Preak… Read more »
Dynamic Resource Mapping
iLab team started working on project “Dynamic Resource Mapping” . This project is aim to provide mapping of any facility or resource and be able to update and query the resource availability via SMS, Web interface. The scope of this project is:Read… Read more »
TB Result Alert System TOT & HC Pilot training
The current turnaround time for Health Center to submit smear to laboratory and gettingresult back is within 1–2 weeks. The delay of receiving lab result can be developedto 2 problems. Read more »
Video: How ‘Watchfire’ Helps the Red Cross
Watchfire is a simple and yet powerful system that initiates and tracks the process of building a volunteer response team with people who are geographically close to each other through phone calls and text message. Read more »
