Catholic Relief Services held a 2 day innovation conference in Nairobi to define an approach to improving the quality of their programming efforts through the use and extension of ICT solutions.

DataDyne was one of the organizations invited to show case our EpiSurveyor application to the participants.  Unfortunately, a Cameroonian CRS team who were to give a presentation on their use of EpiSurveyor did not make it to Nairobi due to logistical problems.I would encourage all who are using EpiSurveyor in the field to share with us your stories.

Health researchers in Cameroon, led by Dr. Mbah Patrick Okwen (health consultant to the Netherlands Development Organization) have been using EpiSurveyor for the last few years to collect critical data concerning a variety of topics including child nutritional status monitoring, community mutual health organizations, investigating governance at hospitals, and watershed and grazing pastures mapping to reduce water contamination and conflict.  Without the need for any international consultants!

Been working with a variety of groups including HHS and PAHO to develop a system to track available bedspace in healthcare facilities in Haiti, so that clinicians in small clinics who have patients needing a higher level of care. Very, very challenging given that there is no single group that is taking responsibility for tracking something like that.

From Economist report on social networking, comes this gem from a former Facebook employee:

“The people at Facebook are essentially utilitarians . . . They want to give people the very best technology for sharing and then get out of their way.”

It all began in Washington DC, during the mHealth summit which i attended and gave presentation on "fighting Polio using Cellphone late last year(2009). Dr Milen from Amsterdam, who attended the same mHealth conference requested to send medical correspondent from Helsinki

Six months after being made public, EpiSurveyor's online site (www.episurveyor.org) just picked up its 1007th user. This means that it's now the most popular web application for public health and international development in the world -- but since it's also the only web application for public health and international development in the world I guess that's a given.

I had the pleasure of being in the audience as Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao spoke at the mHealth Summit in London last week, and was astonished to find him mentioning our very own EpiSurveyor as an example of the power of mobile technology for public health. He noted, correctly, that EpiSurveyor enables workers to make quicker, better and much more informed responses, and leads to much more informed policy making.