Sunday, April 8, 2012

African Disease Outreach Program: Cell phone donations for healthcare network using SMS/Text messages

Great NEWS !!

  I've made contact with Erik Hersman , who runs the iHUB Project in Kenya. They are a major cell phone app incubator project that is transforming disease control on Africa really fast using SMS text messaging through village healthcare workers sending texts about cases of disease to the Kenyan government. The government health agency can get near instantaneous disease reporting daily now as the iHUB cell phone network is deployed throughout the country...really cool !!!  This helps doctors and government healthcare workers in a major way containing nasty diseases in Africa fast. This system can be deployed for minimal cost with simple existing cell phones in any country.....it is a great idea.

The system works really simply:

(Used by a Village healthcare worker: via cell phone simply SMS text messages)
Step #1:  The healthcare work sends a message to a government cellphone like: 1234
Step #2:  Then codes in the disease in the text message: 1-Tuberculosis, 2-HIV, 3-malaria...and so on .
Step #3:  Then codes in location: city/villag,e street house number/cross streets, patient name
Step#4:  Send info to government cell phone servers and databases
Step#5:  Information is processed by government and a medical response team can be sent directly to the house to nip the disease in the bud fast. This is a really system.

My student medical club is donating several hundred used cell phones that are perfectly good and working that are SMS capable for text messaging and can be used by local healthcare workers that roam around their villages helping people.

If you can catch disease early and pinpoint where it is, you can save alot of people from dying.

As my idol Larry Brilliant (Google Foundation Chairman -Healthcare Dept) put it..."early detection, early response". This is the key to averting the next global epidemic where it is bird flu or TB resistance.
   http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4763611070697583371

iHUB Cell Phone Project:  started by Erik Hersman
   http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/39673/

AfriGadget: african inventions/tech:
  http://www.afrigadget.com/



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