Explosion of mobile use in developing countries is helping transform health care

BBC Digital Planet article describes the use of mobiles to collect and share vital data on health and disease. Datadyne's EpiSurveyor software is used by health workers to gather information about vaccination rates and instances of HIV.

"We're using just standard cell phones - not smart phones necessarily, although we're working on an iPhone application," said Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne.

Joel Selanikio, co-founder of Datadyne says that while internet access via desktop or laptop computers is not readily available to all, many people, even in the developing world, have a mobile phone.

EpiSurveyor was built with a focus on international development, but Mr Selanikio says others are finding uses for the system - a trend which could make the project completely self-supporting. For example, he said, the Ministry of Agriculture in Canada use the tool to collect data on veterinary disease in rural farms.

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U.S. Food Safety Web site unveiled

The Obama administration unveiled a consumer Web site today to provide the latest information about food safety and food recalls from across the federal government.

The Web site was launched by the Heath & Human Services and Agriculture department’s Food Safety Working Group and is part the administration’s emphasis on prevention in public health, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in announcing the service.

People can go to the Web site and sign up to receive email and RSS alerts on recalled or potentially unsafe food, ask questions of scientific experts across government and listen to podcasts or view videos on food safety.

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Phones for Health

'Phones for Health' is a public-private partnership that integrates mobile technology and health applications so health workers on the road can track and share health data. In addition, they can order medicines, send alerts, download guidelines, or access training materials.

This is one of several public-private initiatives showcased in a new UNAIDS report that looks at the contribution of AIDS-related public-private partnerships to the six building blocks of health systems: service delivery; human resources; information; medicines and technologies; financing; and leadership.

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Cell phones turned into fluorescent microscopes can help to diagnose diseases

The prototype CellScope moves a major step forward in taking clinical microscopy out of specialized laboratories and into field settings for disease screening and diagnoses.

"The same regions of the world that lack access to adequate health facilities are, paradoxically, well-served by mobile phone networks," said Dan Fletcher, UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering and head of the research team developing the CellScope. "We can take advantage of these mobile networks to bring low-cost, easy-to-use lab equipment out to more remote settings

"The images can either be analyzed on site or wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for remote diagnosis," according to David Breslauer, co-lead author of the study The system could be used to help provide early warning of outbreaks by shortening the time needed to screen, diagnose and treat infectious diseases." The software programs can be easily installed onto a typical cell phone, turning the mobile phone into a self-contained field lab and a "good platform for epidemiological monitoring."

The CellScope developers have even been approached by experts in agriculture interested in using it to help diagnose diseases in crops. Instead of sending in a leaf sample to a lab for diagnosis, farmers could upload an image of the diseased leaf for analysis.

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Communicating swine flu research - Evidence for open access models?

Through Twitter, just came across fascinating blog post from leading science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer...

In his posting, he describes his positive experiences trying to obtain information on swine flu science.

Concluding that "the patient process of old-fashioned science publishing may have to be upgraded", he show how scientists working on the virus created an open wiki (thanks to them for the image on this posting) to share information - "So everyone who wanted to peruse their analysis could see how it developed as more data emerged and as they used different methods to analyze it."

After this open process, it seems the results were published (today 11 June) in Nature - with a Creative Commons license.

Of course, this openness may be due to the urgent nature of the problem. But it does show a different - and open - way to do science. This model combines open 'social' media like wikis and blogs with publishing in a traditional peer-reviewed journal, and the use of creative commons licenses to maximise access to the results.

It sounds like several of the promising pathways CIARD aims to pull together to make agricultural research outputs more accessible!

BioMed Central launches Open Access portal for developing countries

BioMed Central, the world's largest publisher of open access scientific research, today announced a new information portal calling attention to the developing world's need for open access to the scientific and medical literature. The Open Access and the Developing World portal highlights the most relevant peer-reviewed research from BioMed Central's open access journals and brings together the latest news and resources relating to open access and the developing world.

Tags: agricultural information open access science