‘Sierra Leone: Collecting Health Data In Areas With No Power Supply’

by Jon Thompson on November 17, 2008

Statistics by the illiterate: The local traditional birth attendant registers births, children who die immediately after birth, stillbirths and the illness or death of the mother by placing small stones in a box. (Credit: Jørn Braa)

Jeff Allen is in Sierra Leone helping to set up a health information system in Freetown.  He wrote to tell me about the ‘hi tech’ solution they came across for collecting health data.  The traditional birth attendant places a small stone in a hole directly in front of the image of either a healthy child, stillborn, etc.  While I agree with Jeff’s scorn for mobile phone based tracking systems in favor of this more simplistic tool it does beg the question: How hard would it be to build those 5 icons in to a sleek mobile interface?

Jeff is posting semi-regularly over at jra’s thoughts.  Be sure to follow him for at least the next two weeks until he gets back to Switzerland.  The story I mention above was picked up by Science Daily and a few other media outlets.

Read on…

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Global Health Data Collection Where There is No Power « Technology, Health & Development
November 18, 2008 at 3:30 am

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