- Recent
- Popular
- Tags (0)
- Subscribers (2)
- A roadmap toward a European healthgridJune 10
-
This is an exciting work towards building an environment of sharing of resources across heterogeneous and dispersed health data:
- molecular data (e.g. genomics, proteomics)
- cellular data (e.g. pathways)
- tissue data (e.g. cancer types, wound healing)
- personal data (e.g. PHR, EHR)
- population data (e.g. epidemiology)
Few challenges remain, such as:- How do we secure and mainta
- InSTEDD and the Myanmar CycloneMay 9
-
I don't write often but I wanted to let everyone know what InSTEDD is doing in the Myanmar Cyclone response.
1. We have a long-standing working relationship with the open-source disaster management tool called “Sahana”, developed and managed through a group in Sri Lanka. We received a request from them for help early yesterday after Sahana had, in turn, received a request from inside Myanmar. That request was asking for Sahana as the disaster response coordination software to use for the humanitarian response, starting immediately and probably continuing for several months. We agreed to help, of course, and we’ve installed Sahana on the same system we use for our own website at Rackspace and it’s up and working now.
2. We heard late last night that we needed to localize Sahana into Burmese so that we could engage local staff in the response coordination process. We have now located some translators (not enough) for the 3500 words and phrases, and built tools to help break up the phrases into manageable chunks and then weave them back together again. Those translators are within our Google partners, our Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance System contacts in Asia, Stanford, World Vision, and more. An excellent example of crowdsourcing and networking and all happening literally overnight.
3. We’re also talking with the IBM Crisis Response Team that are trying to get into Burma and making sure we have the ability to link the peripheral - Empowerment practice explored...May 7
-
Like my colleague Ed Jezierski, I want to share my concern for the people in Myanmar. I just spoke with a Burmese colleague in Bangkok who told me her family in Yangon is fortunately safe and unharmed. She described the damage in downtown Yangon as largely to trees and satellites on top of buildings. Electricity has been cut off but some people have generators.
Today I continue to explore the elements of effective community-based practice. My previous post was on the positive model Betty Makoni exemplifies for how to address serious social challenges, like domestic violence and rape. Her Girl Child Network employs true empowerment practice. This program, based on a network of girls' clubs, fosters the seeds of strength within the girls in the programs and encourages them to lead and effect change.
Empowerment practice is an overused word for those of us in the social work field. Everyone wants to engage in empowerment practice. One way to begin is to use a method described in an earlier post called asset mapping, which is also nicely described in the Social Design Notes. Another useful perspective is described as - SMS Applications and Microformats - lots of work to do!April 22
-
I got a comment at this weekend's Alt.Net conference - which was echoed in mikel's blog - was about the us not using a location microformat in the Friends Nearby and GeoChat proof of concept applications we have on the InSTEDD site.
In retrospect, it would have been nice to have the support for the microformat, and we should have. But it would have not -I believe- been used much, if at all.
Our bad on the omission (easy to add), but I think it would be good to explain why we did what we did, why we'd do it again (with the addition of the microformat support), and why I think a lot of usability testing is still required to make the the conversation about microformats from SMS phones more realistic.Some background- microformats, like anything that increases interoperability and has the long-term potential of reducing user training, are pure goodness. Microformats specify ways to represent c
- Adventures in PP...April 2
-
We have been in PP (Phnom Penh) for about a week now to start up our Mekong Collaboration Program. Cambodia is going to be the first site for our field tests, and we are working closely with the Ministry of Health and NGOs to identify the requirements and scope of our work. Our primary objective is to support the Cambodian Center for Disease Control in their ability to detect and respond rapidly to priority diseases (including cholera, dengue, and others). Our secondary objective is to develop a set of tools that can be sustained because there is a market for these tools within and beyond the health sector (and even in the commercial sector).
One of our top priorities on this trip has been to get a deeper understanding of the technology infrastructure and staffing. Our technology team, including Ed, our Director of Engineering, believe strongly the tools need to engage and draw on Cambodian talent to be useful and to enable a Cambodian team to provide support after we leave. We welcome ideas on how to build technology sustainably or connections in Cambodia you might recommend.
One of our favorite NGOs is the Khmer Software Initiative, whose vision is "a country where Cambodians can learn and use computers in their own language, a country that does not have to change to a new langu
