Tanzania
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'Virtual Doctors' Helping Patients in Zambia
The idea of a "virtual doctor" project might sound rather futuristic. But the inspiration for this scheme to improve health services in Zambia began in very low-tech and unhappy circumstances. Huw Jones, working in Zambia as a safari guide, was driving a Land Rover along a road in a remote part of the country. He saw a trail of blood in the road, and his first reaction was that it might have come from an animal killed by a lion. But he came across a couple on a bike - the man riding and the woman carried on the handlebars. She was pregnant and bleeding heavily and they had been cycling for hours with the aim of reaching the nearest hospital, almost 60 miles away...
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2015 Was a Good Year for Creating the World's 'Missing Maps' with OpenStreetMap
The Missing Maps project, which launched in 2014, aims to literally and figuratively put more than 20-million at-risk people on the map using OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a platform. We need to fill in "missing maps" before the next disaster strikes, ensuring the maps have detail sufficient for emergency responders to hit the ground running. OpenStreetMap is an open and free source of geographic data. Anyone with a username can add, edit, or update data, so the Missing Maps project is community driven and focuses on local knowledge. Remote volunteers around the world use satellite imagery to trace features, such as roads and buildings. Community members and volunteers in the area then use the base map to add local data to these shapes, including street names, addresses, building types, and points of interest. As we look back at 2015, here are a few success stories from the Missing Maps project...
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3D Design Contest for Medical Tools in Africa
The moment the open source RepRap 3D printer was created, its potential for helping the developing the world was evident. The distributed digital production of open source appropriate technology can make a real difference. Research in this area has been heating up with numerous applications from the Enabling the Future's prosthetic hands, to the Waterscope microscope, to more mundane things like organic farm tools. The ReFab Dar project hopes to accelerate this trend. It is a pilot program that explores how plastic waste can power entrepreneurship using 3D printers in Tanzania. They have built on the early work done by the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology Laboratory's efforts with open source recyclebots to turn plastic waste into 3D printing filament and then into high-value products...
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3D Printed Microscopes to Boost Science in Developing Countries
Dr Richard Bowman from the Department of Physics, working with collaborators at the University of Cambridge and Tanzanian “digital blacksmiths” STICLab, wants to create much cheaper, open-source devices such as microscopes which can be used for disease diagnosis and scientific research. The three-year project, funded through the Global Challenges Research Fund, is testing and refining a prototype general purpose optical microscope made from mass produced lenses, a Raspberry Pi mini-computer and a 3D-printed plastic frame...
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Africa Innovations: 15 Ideas Helping To Transform A Continent
A mobile phone database for dairy farmers and a strain of sweet potato that can help fight child blindness. These are just two of the imaginative new ideas that are tackling Africa's old problems Read More »
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Africa’s Tech Edge
How the continent's many obstacles, from widespread poverty to failed states, allowed African entrepreneurs to beat the West at reinventing money for the mobile age
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An Open Invitation To OpenCon
Last November, 75 students and early career researchers from 35 countries gathered in Berlin to advance campaigns led by the next generation for an open system of academic publishing. The results of their collective effort since have been extraordinary...
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Building Local Skills To Support The Open Source iHRIS Software
Over 20 countries are implementing the open source iHRIS software to manage and plan their health workforce. CapacityPlus, along with other USAID projects led by IntraHealth International, is assisting several of these countries to install, customize, and roll out the human resources information systems (HRIS) software. Read More »
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Computer Training Seminar Opens Doors For Tanzanian Community
Peace Corps volunteer Elizabeth Crompton of Woodstock, Ga., is opening doors to job opportunities for university students and local community members in Tanzania. Together with local faculty, Crompton recently led a seminar on how to operate, navigate and program computer systems using a free, open source computer operating system that is accessible in developing countries like Tanzania [...]. Read More »
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Condom Airborne Meds: 6 Ways Drones Could Change Health Care
Drones have been used to deliver sunscreen to a conference in Palm Springs, Calif., and pizza to a family in New Zealand, but they’re also in the air for far more urgent purposes — such as saving lives. In fact, in some cases, drones could carry defibrillators to heart attack victims faster than an ambulance, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers simulated emergency situations and found they could get automatic external defibrillators to the scene an average of 16 minutes faster by drone than by ambulance...
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Developing Nations Improving Health Communication Through the Use of DHIS2 (Part 1)
DHIS2 implementations are spreading steadily among national health services in developing countries as well as among international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to improving health in the developing world through the use of health information technology. As an open source solution, DHIS2 offers developing countries the advantage of adopting a cost-effective and flexible solution for aggregate statistical data collection, validation, analysis, management, and presentation as well as for data sharing between healthcare professionals and facilities. Organizations and individuals who work with humanitarian software solutions will need to know what DHIS2 is, how it works, and how it might be implemented by national health services and other health-related projects across the globe...
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District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2)
District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) is a free and open source health management data platform used by multiple organizations, including the European Union (EU), and governments worldwide. It is currently being deployed in 54 countries. DHIS2 is a development project by the Health Information Systems Program (HISP) and is used for aggregate statistical data collection, validation, analysis, management, and presentation...
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DIY Lab Technique to Revolutionise Training for Neuroscientists
A team of international researchers have come up with an inexpensive way to self-manufacture lab equipment, which could revolutionise the way neuroscientists across the world are trained. In a study published in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Dr Tom Baden from Sussex Neuroscience and André Maia Chagas, from the University of Tübingen, have devised a new imaging and microscope system called “FlyPi”. The equipment needed for modern neuroscience experiments can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds, which often means only institutions in rich countries can undertake top-level research and scientific training...
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EIFL Starts An OA Project In Kenya, Tanzania And Uganda
“Open access: knowledge sharing and sustainable scholarly communication in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda” is a new EIFL regional project funded by Spider, the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions DSV, Department of Computer and System Sciences, Stockholm University. Read More »
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Expanding iHRIS to Support the Social Services Workforce
When we think of healthcare workers, we tend to think of doctors, nurses, midwives, and the like. We originally developed the iHRIS Suite to track and manage these traditional, well-defined cadres. Read More »
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