Images

This album captures the iLab Southeast Asia (iLab SEA) human-centered design process in action. In the following photos, team members from the iLab SEA, based in Phnom Penh, do a user evaluation to test the usability of software we are developing. This album covers 2 laboratories and 2 health centers in Kampong Cham. ***ABOUT THE PROJECT*** Tuberculosis Testing in Rural Areas of Cambodia: TB Lab Results Alert System In September of 2011, InSTEDD’s Phnom Penh based iLab Southeast Asia started collaborating with Family Health International (FHI) and the National Center for Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control (CENAT) to improve the efficiency of reporting TB lab results to patients living in rural villages of the Kampong Cham province of Cambodia. Until recently, provincial health care centers in rural villages in Cambodia have been relying primarily on a paper-based medical reports system, as well as inadequate civic infrastructure such as telephone systems and basic roads to transport TB test results between rural health centers where patients have access to TB tests and centralized laboratories with the facilities to analyze the tests and report the results. In most provincial health care systems in Cambodia, TB smears are taken from patients suspected of having contracted the TB virus in health centers. The smears must be transported, usually by motorcycle, to testing laboratories where they are analyzed. After the results are obtained in the labs, they are transported by the same means back to the health care centers where patients are informed whether their test results are positive or negative. This whole process, when reports are facilitated by means of a paper-based system, takes on average between 10 to 14 days. During this time it is possible for patients who have contracted TB to unknowingly spread the virus to new victims.

The first BarCamp in Siem Reap Angkor in 2012.

iLab Southeast Asia staff, Yon and Mesa, traveled to Myanmar (aka Burma) to participate in BarCamp Yangon 2012. Mesa gave a presentation on “Test Driven Development (TDD)” to about 50 people. Yon also gave a presentation on “Technology and Grassroots level users” to about 20 people. As a special treat, Nobel Peach Prize Winning activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, gave the opening speech to kickoff the event.

An important aspect of InSTEDD’s work is that we work with the people who will actually be using the tools we create every step of the way. We don’t build anything in isolation and we involve the end-users every step of the way. When we spoke to the people at these rural health centers, we encountered a number of issues that we had to find creative solutions to work around. Back in mid 2009, part of the InSTEDD team went to Southeast Asia to work with some rural community health workers in order to create a simple, fast and easy way for them to share information about disease instances at their health centers. Disease instances would include things such as the disease type, the age of the person who was sick, the date of when they fell ill and so on. The information needed to be shared in a somewhat structured way so that the health workers higher up the information hierarchy could easily be able to tell when there was a problem. We needed to help them find a way to “compare apples and apples”, not apples and mangoes… Continue to rest of blog post here: instedd.org/blog/toilet-paper-roll-reporting-wheel/

In August of 2010, InSTEDD’s Director of Communications, Brooke Estin, went to the field to photograph the people affected by InSTEDD’s work. She visited rural villages, provincial health centers and governmental health offices. All of the people she met were deeply committed to improving the health conditions of their communities in order to prevent potentially catastrophic outbreaks.

In August of 2010, InSTEDD’s Director of Communications, Brooke Estin, went to the field to photograph the people affected by InSTEDD’s work. She visited rural villages, provincial health centers and governmental health offices. All of the people she met were deeply committed to improving the health conditions of their communities in order to prevent potentially catastrophic outbreaks.

Just a little glimpse behind the InSTEDD scenes.

In November 2007, InSTEDD participated in a public health/humanitarian response demonstration performed with local organizations near InSTEDD’s headquarters in California called Golden Shadow. This is an event held in parallel with the larger State of California exercise called Golden Guardian.