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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/atom10full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" xml:lang="en"><title type="text">InSTEDD - Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://instedd.org" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/instedd" /><subtitle type="html">At InSTEDD, we envision a world where communities everywhere design and use technology to continuously improve their health, safety and development. </subtitle><updated>2012-02-02T19:17:25+00:00</updated><generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=</generator><sy:updatePeriod xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/">hourly</sy:updatePeriod><sy:updateFrequency xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/">1</sy:updateFrequency><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/instedd" /><feedburner:info uri="instedd" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><logo>http://instedd.org/wp-content/themes/instedd_v3/images/logo-instedd-feedburner.jpg</logo><feedburner:emailServiceId>instedd</feedburner:emailServiceId><feedburner:feedburnerHostname>http://feedburner.google.com</feedburner:feedburnerHostname><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/addtomyyahoo4.gif">Subscribe with My Yahoo!</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://www.newsgator.com/images/ngsub1.gif">Subscribe with NewsGator</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://feeds.my.aol.com/add.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://o.aolcdn.com/favorites.my.aol.com/webmaster/ffclient/webroot/locale/en-US/images/myAOLButtonSmall.gif">Subscribe with My AOL</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://feeds.feedburner.com/instedd" src="http://www.bloglines.com/images/sub_modern11.gif">Subscribe with Bloglines</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://www.netvibes.com/img/add2netvibes.gif">Subscribe with Netvibes</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif">Subscribe with Google</feedburner:feedFlare><feedburner:feedFlare href="http://www.pageflakes.com/subscribe.aspx?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2Finstedd" src="http://www.pageflakes.com/ImageFile.ashx?instanceId=Static_4&amp;fileName=ATP_blu_91x17.gif">Subscribe with Pageflakes</feedburner:feedFlare><entry><title type="text">Part 2: “If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know”</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/Pt3qwPEHB3Q/" /><category term="activism" /><category term="Africa" /><category term="Asia" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Cambodia" /><category term="iLab" /><category term="InSTEDD" /><category term="Latin America" /><category term="North America" /><category term="Project" /><category term="Technologies" /><category term="Thailand" /><author><name>edjez</name></author><updated>2012-02-02T11:17:25-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4584</id><summary type="html">If You Don’t Go, You Don’t KnowWhat We’ve Learned and What We’re Doing About It PART ... &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part2/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;h2 style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know&lt;br /&gt;What We’ve Learned and What We’re Doing About It&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;h2 style="text-align: center;"&gt;PART 2: The Journey&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(For part one, click &lt;a title="Part 1: “If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know”" href="http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part1/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;h2 style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4599" title="communityevent" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/communityevent.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="466" height="300" /&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;h2&gt; &lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt; &lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;How to Scale 10x Overnight &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Part of the challenge of scaling technologies that use SMS text messaging is how quickly the costs adds up.  With this in mind, we knew that in order to reach large numbers of people, we had to develop relationships with mobile operators that could help us keep our costs low.  Reluctant at first, always business-savvy, and initially tough negotiators, we built strong relationships with &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/network_group/mobile-communications/"&gt;supportive mobile operators&lt;/a&gt;.  With the support of these mobile operators, InSTEDD could effectively scale from 5 to 500000 people overnight! This meant that with the proper system, you could share what you knew instantly, in real time with the right people who could then take action to mitigate the potential damages.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A New Approach to Working Together&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;By the time InSTEDD &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/about-us/history/"&gt;reached 2-years-old&lt;/a&gt;, we had accomplished more than anyone thought possible.  We had a mature team that knew how to work together in an agile and efficient way and we had made deals with mobile operators and aggregators to help us scale.  But most importantly, our &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/ilabs/"&gt;iLabs&lt;/a&gt; had the full capacity to create, deploy and support a range of tools to help us achieve our mission. The entire team was deeply committed to cultivating a radical shift in how technologies were created.  We believed that the design and development of technologies should happen in and by the communities they are meant to serve. Using this approach, the technology was lean, modular, simple, modern, and most importantly, useful. We would work the people who would actually be using the tools, in flexible and iterative ways that showed results in weeks instead of months or years. Yet with all its promise, this was a novel concept that was hard to grasp for people who were used to work in other ways. Many didn’t believe that we could deliver something so fast and cheaply… unless, of course, it wasn’t very good. Few people had the first-hand experience that the closer you are to the problem, the more focused the solution becomes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;Gaining Momentum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div&gt;The proof that this method was working kept accumulating, and eventually a watershed movement happened as more and more government groups and NGOs approached InSTEDD with the belief that with good, local design, technology would help them achieve their social goals. Since the design was done bottom up, we had government users — not your typical first adopters — choosing to use tools despite them not being mandated officially to do so and without bogus financial incentives. They used the tools because they truly believed they were useful. Since we built things as modular and open source services, local developers stepped up, independently, to build new solutions for hospitals, NGOs and communities.  They were able to develop something useful in a matter of weeks– with capabilities that high-income countries would spend millions of dollars on! Due of our relationship with &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/network_group/mobile-communications/"&gt;mobile operators&lt;/a&gt;, we could aggregate business arrangements and rapidly scale tools from tens to thousands of users…with no extra work.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;Haiti Earthquake of 2010&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Another pivotal point for InSTEDD came right after the Haiti earthquake of 2010. Our modular architecture, ability to connect with mobile operators and scale quickly as well as our deep-held belief that data needs to flow through fundamental standards, allowed us to deploy an emergency information system to help the relief efforts.  The Emergency Information System (EIS) that we developed for Thomson Reuters Foundation supported the flow of a million text messages that aided the relief efforts.  As the Haitians were text messaging in their needs, that information was crowd sourced and visualized in other tools of the larger relief ecosystem to help identify what was needed and where.  And to achieve even more impact, EIS was used to send messages back to the survivors with useful information to aid their recovery. You can read a more detailed account of our work in Haiti here.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h3&gt; &lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;The Global Community&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Since our tools are open source and can be used from any location, we saw that people from New York to Bahrain had discovered that when you design for a constrained environment, the result is simple enough that it’s applicable anywhere else, and ready to roll as soon as the need appears. We intentionally combined our humanitarian mission with smart business acumen so that we could set our first iLab on track to scale and become a financially independent social enterprise.  You can read more about our &lt;a href="instedd.org/ilabs/"&gt;iLabs&lt;/a&gt; and that trajectory &lt;a href="http://trackerblog.trackernews.net/2011/06/14/ilabs/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Today, new applications are designed every day in our two iLabs that help people treat, manage and prevent the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and more.  Our tools support the rapid reporting of infectious diseases by sending alerts upwards, downwards, and horizontally, therefore stopping outbreaks before the rest of the world even hears about them.  They are used to track information after earthquakes, manage scarce supplies in rural areas, and send disease specific reminders to patients to help them stay healthy. These applications are cost effective, scalable and can be rapidly assembled with the open toolkit we’ve been growing over the years.  All of this is done with the context specific needs of the users leading every step of the way.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;iLabs: Bridging the Gap Between Society and Technology&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason why many development projects ultimately fail is because there is a huge, constantly changing, gap between the needs of the people and what was created by the NGO.  We knew the intersection between society’s needs and technology is was where the “rubber hit the road” and where we needed to be.  With this socio-technical approach in mind, we went straight to the communities themselves and developed the concept for local innovation labs, aka &lt;a href="http://www.instedd.org/ilabs"&gt;iLabs&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;In 2007, InSTEDD launched the first iLab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to target issues affecting the Mekong Basin region. Since its inception, we’ve worked with the Cambodian Communicable Disease Control to strengthen the agency’s internal communications, we’ve worked with the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD (NCHADS) to develop an appointment reminder system as an extension to their current patient information system.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In April of 2011, we&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/blog/ilablatamlaunch/"&gt; officially launched&lt;/a&gt; our second innovation lab.  The&lt;a href="http://www.ilabamericalatina.org/"&gt; iLab Latin America&lt;/a&gt; was born from our partnership with&lt;a href="http://www.manas.com.ar/"&gt; Manas&lt;/a&gt;, a Buenos Aires-based software development and consulting firm that we had already been working with on InSTEDD projects all over the world. Their goal would be to create a center for technological innovation tailored to the Latin American region’s unique needs.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Currently, we are helping the design of our third iLab. What’s even more exciting than opening more iLabs is that parts of our model are being applied all over the world.  From Kenya to Liberia and beyond, people are taking action towards creating this sort of innovative environment. The magic of the iLabs can be seen in the faces of those that work there, those that support them, and more importantly those that benefit from their work.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It turned out that by exploring what technologies would help “early detection and early response”, we discovered something much larger.  We found a way to continuously evolve, create, recombine and scale the impact of our tools while staying true to the need and keeping our costs low. Metaphorically speaking, we had set out to find gold, and ended up with an alchemist’s recipe, crucible, and lab for producing it. Yet, despite our important discoveries, there is no magic solution.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The challenge is still out there. Millions of dollars are wasted every year on technologies don’t solve the problems at hand, are isolated into silos and keep important data away from the people that really need it. Still today, tools are built with an inherent design that empowers its administrators to fulfill their own needs– at the expense of the needs of the communities. The media will continue to highlight and repeat the flashy, sensational development stories, making it that much harder for the work to tell what’s really making an impact.  We are committed to having an real social impact and are creating a team to focus exclusively on research and evaluation. The intent is to have better research that will help discover what has worked and discard what hasn’t based on evidence. Since InSTEDD really helps other groups and agencies do their work; we will have to work with the willing — sometimes  folks are too eager to dismiss or hype up the impact of technology based on belief.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong id="internal-source-marker_0.6327983436640352"&gt;A Better World&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div&gt;We all want this world to be better — for ourselves, our families and that rapidly translates to everyone. The evidence is all around us that digital technology is the facilitator of a new ‘age’ — just as stone and iron facilitated new ages, not that long ago. We have just taken our first primitive steps down this new road.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This task is larger than any single organization can achieve.   The good news is that each and everyone of us can play a role in ‘changing the world’. If you are reading this there is a high chance you are engaged and can offer support moving forward.  Help us in bringing the power of digital technologies to where they make the most difference.  We envision a world where people are healthy, productive, kind and creative.  We strive to ensure that they are safe when the unexpected strikes or as an unknown future slowly thunders their way. We seek to support the development of a smarter and compassionate future, with well-designed technology that serves the ones in need.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/Pt3qwPEHB3Q" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part2/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part2/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Part 1: “If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know”</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/qYD7WrrfezI/" /><category term="Africa" /><category term="Asia" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Cambodia" /><category term="Europe" /><category term="Haiti" /><category term="iLab" /><category term="InSTEDD" /><category term="Latin America" /><category term="North America" /><category term="Project" /><category term="Technologies" /><category term="Thailand" /><author><name>edjez</name></author><updated>2012-01-24T16:30:04-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4486</id><summary type="html">If You Don’t Go, You Don’t KnowWhat We’ve Learned and What We’re Doing About It   ... &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part1/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div&gt;
&lt;h2 style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If You Don’t Go, You Don’t Know&lt;br /&gt;What We’ve Learned and What We’re Doing About It&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4493" title="Rural Patients" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/Ed_reflection_1_feature.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="506" height="256" /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 style="text-align: left;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #000000;"&gt;PART 1: The Realization&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our TED Prize Beginnings &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;InSTEDD was created from a TED prize with a single vision.  In his acceptance speech, Larry Brilliant said:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p style="padding-left: 30px;" dir="ltr"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;“My TED wish is for you to help build a global system,an early-warning system, to protect us against humanity’s worst nightmares. So instead of a hidden pandemic of bird flu, we find it and immediately contain it. Instead of industrial accidents like oil spills or the catastrophe in Bhopal, we find them, and we respond to them. Instead of famine, hidden until it is too late, we detect it, and we respond. And instead of a system, which is owned by a government and hidden in the bowels of government, let’s build an early detection system that’s freely available to anyone in the world in their own language.“ (full talk &lt;a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The “early warning/early response” mantra that Dr. Brilliant repeated throughout his speech was the core idea that InSTEDD was built upon.  In order to really save lives and keep people healthy, we needed to act as a global community to advance our thinking on how to create a system that taps into both the importance of local knowledge and the power of technology.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The founder build an experienced, world-class team to move InSTEDD forward. The world of bio surveillance and disease detection was no mystery to this team.  Whether it was simple data reports or complex phylogenetic analysis, InSTEDD’s experts knew how it all fit together. Yet there was still a huge missing piece that had to be found.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Water Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There were already many early warning systems out there, but the warnings still weren’t coming early enough. There were many analyst groups with powerful tools and lots of information, yet they seemed to be cut off from what was being experienced across the globe in the communities that were suffering. There was something more that needed to happen, and it wasn’t about adding more dots on maps.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Experience had taught us an important lesson — if you don’t go, you don’t know. While going to the source is important, individual knowledge is not enough. Everyone at InSTEDD had extensive careers and had developed domain expertise as they worked around the world, but what was really needed was to look at things from a unified, not just domain specific, perspective. The world had to be experienced through social and technical lenses simultaneously. There were plenty of data reporting technologies that people didn’t use — and didn’t want to use.  Why?  There were plenty of lives to save if the right people shared what they knew, at the right time, and acted together. What was getting in the way? That was the first problem we needed to explore.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A New Approach to Technology&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While we were striving to understand the behavior patterns and real motivations of people living in vulnerable communities, a wide variety of seemingly helpful technologies continued to pop up all around us.  At first, many of these new technologies seemed to avoid the obstacles we were observing in the field, yet after time all of them ended up in failure.  Why did this keep happening?  Was the big issue putting forms on phones? Maybe, yet, not really. Was the final solution recording information on to a map for the connected world to see? Well, not quite, the communities we worked in kept telling us again and again.  There was something subtle yet critical just under the surface. Early warning and response, and its outcome — healthier people–  would never be possible without a cross disciplinary course of action.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our diversified global team was not just spending time in the communities we were hoping to serve, but were born out of them.  It was the local experience that taught us a clear lesson again and again. Technology could serve people and their health, but something had to be changed about the way it was being developed. We knew that a new approach was necessary.  And that was exactly what we set out to create.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making Information Actionable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A wise man once said “teaching is reminding people of what they already know”, and that message instantly resonated with us. The challenge was to identify what people already knew and use the power of technology to bring that information together to make it tangible, operational, workable and most importantly, actionable.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Focusing on this would be a departure from the “early warning, early response” founding idea, but we were willing to expand our vision to strive towards creating a precedent for using technologies to best serve our global community. The challenge seemed huge, but we knew this was the value that InSTEDD needed to strive for.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Change is never easy, and our change in course was no exception.  One of the most critical issues was the complexity of working as a non-profit and being dependent on the traditional structure of grants. Few grant makers are thrilled when their grant recipients don’t do exactly what was assumed up front. Fortunately for us, we had allies at Google.org, the Rockefeller Foundation and more who with an appropriate balance of skepticism and optimism gave us free reign to act on our intuitions and observations. That gave us both the motivation and flexibility to reach out to the most remote places where people had never even heard the word “Google” or “TED”. let alone know how to use the technologies we take for granted in the developed world. We knew had it in us to deliver results, but this was a tall order.  There was nothing else to do but hit the ground running.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Importance of Personal Design in the Mobile Technology Revolution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Mobile technologies present an unprecedented opportunity to improve health, safety and development. We are living in a world where nearly everyone alive has access to a mobile phone.  In fact, more people in the world have access to cell phones than they do toothbrushes.  Within this context, the global communication possibilities are endless.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;While access to personal technologies such as the mobile phone is moving in the right direction, we must not forget how important the design aspect is in making these tools valuable and supportive of a healthier world. Personal technology requires personalized design; and no mobile health solution we had come across was approaching design from this angle, especially in the developing world. We found the skeletons of multiple tools in old PCs around rural clinics. Even more disturbingly, we saw example after example of tools used only under perverse incentive schemes, including paying individuals each time they used the system.  These Frankensteins on life support were the best experience many of the people we talked to had with technology, which explained why we kept being turned away.  We heard things like  “You mean you can have something up and running in weeks? Impossible!” or “There is no way our rural users will send these reports.  The last project paid every user fifty cents every time they send something, so they sent gibberish daily. If you want better information, you need to pay them better!”  We talked to the people who would be using the tools to find out what would incentivize them to report data.  We found out who was the data for and how would it help them? We learned how information was flowing so we could know when these rural health workers would find out if a neighboring village was getting sick. We knew progress could be made only if we put these people at the center of our world, and started creating technology with them, not just for them.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We knew we were fighting an uphill battle. We also knew that if we could engage people with incentives more meaningful than just money, then the impact of this work would be huge.  So we stayed the course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Part 2 coming next week!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/qYD7WrrfezI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part1/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/reflections_part1/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">2011 Reflections: Technologies, iLabs and Accolades</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/c4KIvRejYIc/" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Cambodia" /><category term="changemakers" /><category term="Cisco" /><category term="iLab" /><category term="red cross" /><category term="Technologies" /><category term="verboice" /><author><name>Brooke Estin</name></author><updated>2012-01-02T17:07:30-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4410</id><summary type="html">It has been quite the year for our team here at InSTEDD and our innovation labs in Southeast Asia and Latin America.  As we prepare to enter the year ahead we wanted to take a moment to look back over a few of our highlights from 2011. &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/2011-reflections/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4417" title="2011_in_review" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/2011_in_review1.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="511" height="210" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It has been quite the year for our team here at InSTEDD and our &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/ilabs/"&gt;Innovation Labs&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a title="InSTEDD Booklet 2011" href="http://instedd.org/ilabs/southeast-asia/"&gt;Southeast Asia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/ilabs/latin-america/"&gt;Latin America&lt;/a&gt;.  As we prepare to enter the year ahead we wanted to take a moment to look back over a few of our highlights from 2011.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: center;"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p style="text-align: left;"&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presented: TEDx Phnom Penh&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/from-the-ted-prize-to-tedxphnom-penh/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-4420" title="Channe_TEDxPP_icon" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/Channe_TEDxPP_icon-150x150.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="150" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;In February, Channe Suy, Product Manager at iLab Southeast Asia &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXV7udFXFlY&amp;amp;feature=relmfu"&gt;gave an inspiring talk&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;a href="../blog/from-the-ted-prize-to-tedxphnom-penh/"&gt;TEDx Phnom Penh&lt;/a&gt; about how we can create sustainable solutions to improve our future by building the capacity of local communities through knowledge sharing.  This is one of our &lt;a href="../about-us/guiding-principles/"&gt;guiding principles&lt;/a&gt; and Channe was able to share about our work in capacity building in Southeast Asia though the iLab.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Launched: iLab Latin America&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ilabamericalatina.org/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4422" title="iLab_LatAm" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/iLab_LatAm1.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="150" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;A few months later in April we &lt;a href="../blog/ilablatamlaunch/"&gt;officially launched&lt;/a&gt; our second innovation lab! &lt;a href="http://www.ilabamericalatina.org/"&gt;iLab Latin America&lt;/a&gt; was born from our partnership with &lt;a href="http://www.manas.com.ar/" target="_blank"&gt;Manas&lt;/a&gt;, a Buenos Aires-based software development and consulting firm that we had already been working with on InSTEDD projects all over the world.  Their goal would be to create a center for technological innovation tailored to the region’s unique needs.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eliminating Malaria: &lt;/strong&gt; Malaria Day Zer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;"&gt;o Collaboration&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/malaria-day-zero-alert-system-pilot.html"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4423" title="malaria_day_zero" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/malaria_day_zero.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="150" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;August was a busy month for iLab Southeast Asia.  First came the trainings for health care workers in the Kampot province of Cambodia on the &lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/malaria-day-zero-alert-system-pilot.html"&gt;Malaria Day Zero&lt;/a&gt; web application with SMS text messaging for reporting of malaria cases. Village health care workers were also trained on the system and provided with a solar cell and mobile phone in order to employ the reporting system.  Also in August, iLab Southeast Asia set out to cut down on the current time of 1–2 weeks for obtaining TB test results.  And thus the &lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/tb-result-alert-system-tot-pilot.html"&gt;Lab Result Alert System&lt;/a&gt; was developed. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watchfire: A Collaboration with The Red Cross and Cisco&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/watchfire-video/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4425" title="watchfire" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/watchfire.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="150" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;As October rolled around, we were awarded a seed grant from &lt;a href="http://www.cisco.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Cisco Systems&lt;/a&gt; for the development of a program to support shared safety, self reliance and situational awareness during a public crisis in the Bay Area.  For this project, &lt;a href="../blog/watchfire-video/"&gt;we worked with the Red Cross&lt;/a&gt; to design, develop and test an &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/09/live-recruiting-of-volunteers-through.html"&gt;emergency response team assembly tool&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;a href="http://blog.ilabamericalatina.org/2011/09/la-herramienta-de-instedd-que-le.html"&gt;Watchfire&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Winner: TrueBites wins the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media Competition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/citizen-media/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4426" title="truebites_winner" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/truebites_winner.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="150" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;In November we were honored to be chosen as a finalist in the &lt;a href="../blog/citizen-media/"&gt;Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media competition.&lt;/a&gt;  The iLab Latin America’s idea was for a &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/10/new-kind-of-news.html"&gt;new kind of news&lt;/a&gt; where information is broken into small bites and then all those bites are brought together to create a multi-perspective story.  Thanks to all those who supported us with their votes, the idea for &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/11/truebites-wins-ashoka-changemakers.html"&gt;TrueBites was one of four winners&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Released: New Free and Open Source Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Throughout 2011, we released several &lt;a href="../technologies/"&gt;new technologies&lt;/a&gt;.  They are all not only free and open source but also can be combined with our other technologies to develop integrated systems and individualized programs to support a multitude of global health initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/technologies/pollit/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4434" title="pollit" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/pollit.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="75" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://pollit.instedd.org/"&gt;Pollit&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;a href="../blog/ntroducing-pollit/"&gt;real-time feedback tool &lt;/a&gt;that lets you collect status updates, opinions and more all via mobile phones. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/technologies/remindem/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4445" title="remindem" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/remindem1.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="75" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://remindem.instedd.org/"&gt;Remindem&lt;/a&gt; lets you set up a &lt;a href="../blog/why-we-love-remindem/"&gt;schedule of tips, reminders or messages&lt;/a&gt; that will be sent via SMS messages to list subscribers.  Like all of our tools, they can be used individually or paired with other tools to create more complete solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/technologies/verboice/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4436" title="verboice" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/verboice.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="75" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/technologies/verboice/"&gt;Verboice&lt;/a&gt;,  which transcends language and literacy barriers because it allows anyone to create and run applications that interact via voice.  This allows your users &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/11/verboice-listen-and-respond-to-voice-of.html"&gt;to listen and record messages&lt;/a&gt; in their own language and dialect.  Verboice was also the system that &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWwFhSBu6gU&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be"&gt;Baby Monitor&lt;/a&gt;- a mobile application that we developed for the Population Council.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/watchfire-video/"&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4439" title="watchfire" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/watchfire_icon.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="150" height="75" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; Verboice is also the foundation for Watchfire, the emergency response team assembly tool we &lt;a href="../news-media/video/watchfire-red-cross-cisco/"&gt;developed for the Bay Area Red Cross&lt;/a&gt; with funding from Cisco.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These are just a few of our technologies and highlights from 2011.  But we couldn’t have done it without our community’s continued support.  Thank you from all of us for supporting us this past year with your &lt;a href="../donate/"&gt;donations&lt;/a&gt;, your enthusiasm and your kind words in blogs, articles and social media.  We are looking forward to the challenges and triumphs that await us all in 2012 and to moving closer to &lt;a href="../about-us/"&gt;our vision&lt;/a&gt; of a world where communities everywhere design and use technology to continuously improve their health, safety and development.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://instedd.org/donate"&gt;&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-4449 aligncenter" title="donate_banner_girl" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/donate_banner_girl.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="570" height="252" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/c4KIvRejYIc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/2011-reflections/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/2011-reflections/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">In Her Own Words: Channe Suy Attends OpenMRS Implementers Meeting</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/l40f-5pEA_c/" /><category term="Africa" /><category term="Asia" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Cambodia" /><category term="iLab" /><author><name>Brooke Estin</name></author><updated>2011-12-20T12:58:06-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4404</id><summary type="html">This past October, Channe Suy, product manger at iLab Southeast Asia traveled to Rwanda to participate in the OpenMRS community’s annual Implementers Meeting for five days of collaboration, sharing of implementation experiences and working together to improve OpenMRS.  &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/channe-at-openmrs-implementers-meeting/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;p style="text-align: left;"&gt;&lt;em&gt;This past October,&lt;a href="../about-us/team/staff/channe-suy/"&gt; Channe Suy&lt;/a&gt;, product manger at&lt;a href="../ilabs/southeast-asia/"&gt; iLab Southeast Asia&lt;/a&gt; traveled to Rwanda to participate in the &lt;a href="http://openmrs.org/"&gt;OpenMRS&lt;/a&gt; community’s annual Implementers Meeting for five days of collaboration, sharing of implementation experiences and working together to improve OpenMRS.  Channe was invited to the conference because the iLab Southeast Asia and InSTEDD have worked closely with the OpenMRS system, contributing code and design expertise for the mobile integration of medical records.  Additionally, in partnership with the Ministry of Health Cambodia, the iLab Southeast Asia is prototyping systems addressing maternal-transmission of HIV on the OpenMRS system.  Channe addressed how iLab Southeast Asia was using OpenMRS and the similarities between Rwanda and Cambodia in her conference talk.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-4405" title="ChanneHealthCenter" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/DSC2468-1024x797.jpg?9d7bd4" alt="" width="614" height="478" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It is my first time to attend the OpenMRS conference. The event took place in Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda is a beautiful hilly country area with perfect climate and warm smile of people. I felt very connected in some way as the country where I am from also had dark history of genocide as in Rwanda.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The meeting provided me opportunity to meet with interesting people from different part of the world who work on health information system, typically on OpenMRS. Participants from Cambodia in that meeting were Dr.Chamnan from NCHADs, Dr.Sambath and Mr.Roth from URC, and me from InSTEDD iLab Phnom Penh.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It gave me such a surprise to see an African country moving ahead even far better than some countries in Asia with regard to electronic medical record system. I think Cambodia itself has more to learn from the existing implementation of medical record system from Africa. The cultures are different but we are developing countries and the context of people in terms of economic scale are very similar.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;NGOs such as Jembi, Ampath, PIH and Baobab have demonstrated very good success examples of OpenMRS implementation. OpenMRS has a very strong community and even African countries have the local capacity to be able to do customization of the tool base to their specific needs. One example that was demonstrated during the meeting, there was implementation of OpenMRS with touch screen and mobile data collection and reporting.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I went on a site visit at PIH site, Rwinkwavu Hospital, on the third day of the event. At the primary care registration counter the health staff used a touch screen system which is base on OpenMRS. PIH has been deploying this system for 9 months and the catchment population coverage has registered about 90%.  This is very impressive! The hospital lab uses lab module of OpenMRS. Health insurance was introduced to this hospital with multiple categories based on each person’s living condition. Majority is in the middle category which the insurance cost them $USD 3–4 annually.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the OpenMRS organizer, I like the way the event was organized, especially the “unconference” style. Another cool part was the Lightning Talk sessions where each presenter was given only 5 minutes. I also gave a lightning talk on the experience and work of the iLab Phnom Penh.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I look forward to the next OpenMRS meeting which will be in Asia… I wish that country could be Cambodia!&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/l40f-5pEA_c" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/channe-at-openmrs-implementers-meeting/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/channe-at-openmrs-implementers-meeting/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Dynamic Resource Mapping</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/wMhN5I48lkU/dynamic-resource-mapping.html" /><author><name>Channe</name></author><updated>2011-12-14T22:38:42-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?guid=5bf5ac5f4e56d40460862fe8fe03701f</id><summary type="html">iLab team started working on project “Dynamic Resource Mapping” . This project is aim to provide mapping of any facility or resource and be able to update and query the resource availability via SMS, Web interface. The scope of this project is:Read... &lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2010/02/dynamic-resource-mapping.html"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">iLab team started working on project “Dynamic Resource Mapping” . This project is aim to provide mapping of any facility or resource and be able to update and query the resource availability via SMS, Web interface. The scope of this project is:&lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2010/02/dynamic-resource-mapping.html#more"&gt;Read more »&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9209663197707706977-5564265767880471?l=phnompenhlab.instedd.org' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/wMhN5I48lkU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/uncategorized/dynamic-resource-mapping/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2010/02/dynamic-resource-mapping.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">TB Result Alert System TOT &amp; HC Pilot training</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/-BMpW2vokGU/tb-result-alert-system-tot-pilot.html" /><author><name>An Yon</name></author><updated>2011-12-14T22:32:37-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?guid=3de21892e4b94f4190eead298a830ab6</id><summary type="html">The current  turnaround time for Health Center to submit smear to laboratory and gettingresult back is within 1-2 weeks. The delay of receiving lab result can be developedto 2 problems. Read more »
   
 &lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/tb-result-alert-system-tot-pilot.html"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"&gt;&lt;div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"&gt;The &lt;span style="letter-spacing: 0pt;"&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:&amp;#39;Trebuchet MS&amp;#39;, sans-serif;"&gt;current  turnaround time for Health Center to submit smear to laboratory and gettingresult back is within 1-2 weeks. The delay of receiving lab result can be developedto 2 problems. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;a href="http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/tb-result-alert-system-tot-pilot.html#more"&gt;Read more »&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9209663197707706977-4538578526131264352?l=phnompenhlab.instedd.org' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/-BMpW2vokGU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/uncategorized/tb-result-alert-system-tot-hc-pilot-training/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://phnompenhlab.instedd.org/2011/11/tb-result-alert-system-tot-pilot.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Video: How ‘Watchfire’ Helps the Red Cross</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/CnKFmPfWyz0/" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Cisco" /><category term="red cross" /><category term="Technologies" /><author><name>Brooke Estin</name></author><updated>2011-12-14T10:27:22-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4357</id><summary type="html">Watchfire is a simple and yet powerful system that initiates and tracks the process of building a volunteer response team with people who are geographically close to each other through phone calls and text message. &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/watchfire-video/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4372" title="Al Mallama" src="http://instedd.org/wp-content/uploads/al-image1.png?9d7bd4" alt="" width="144" height="140" /&gt;“From the time we’re notified to when we’re on the scene is less than 1 hour… One of the first steps we need to take is initiating our volunteers to get out into the field.  How do we communicate that?”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;- Al Mallamo — Disaster Services Chair, Bay Area Chapter of the American Red Cross &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE TOOL&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With this context in mind, we worked with the American Red Cross to develop a tool that would help them get their volunteers on the disaster response scene as quickly, smoothly and efficiently as possible.  Since the clock is ticking, every moment counts.  &lt;span style="color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watchfire is a simple and yet powerful system that initiates and tracks the process of building a volunteer response team with people who are geographically close to each other through phone calls and text message.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The below video is a short 3 minute overview of how Watchfire was developed and the impact the Red Cross believes it will have:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zcpIb6QXFy8" frameborder="0" width="540" height="396"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE PROJECT OVERVIEW&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In October of 2010, &lt;a href="http://www.cisco.com/"&gt;Cisco&lt;/a&gt; awarded a seed grant to InSTEDD for the development of technology designed to improve the resilience of community-level disaster response. This grant was for the development of a program to support shared safety, self reliance and situational awareness during a public crisis in the Bay Area.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 2011, InSTEDD designed, developed, and pilot tested a tool, called Watchfire, to help the &lt;a href="http://www.redcross.org/"&gt;American Red Cross&lt;/a&gt;(ARC) improve their community level disaster response in the San Francisco Bay Area. Working closely with the ARC on a needs assessment, we learned that their highest priority was improving the speed and coordination of ARC’s Disaster Action Teams (DATs). Using an agile development process that involved the ARC in the cycle of building better and better technical solutions, we developed Watchfire, a simple and yet powerful system that initiates and tracks the process of building a volunteer response team with people who are geographically close to each other through phone calls and text messages. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE PROCESS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For a more detailed look into the process, please read the blog post &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/09/live-recruiting-of-volunteers-through.html" rel="bookmark"&gt;“Live recruiting of volunteers through phone calls and text messages”&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/CnKFmPfWyz0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/watchfire-video/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/watchfire-video/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Truebites wins Ashoka Changemakers’ competition</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/gj2i6QonR-0/truebites-wins-ashoka-changemakers.html" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="changemakers" /><category term="iLab" /><category term="Technologies" /><category term="journalism" /><category term="media" /><author><name>Nicolas di Tada</name></author><updated>2011-11-29T11:59:05-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?guid=c1684f2203d4788da6953a23eb6b4a45</id><summary type="html">We are happy to announce that Truebites is one of the winners of the Ashoka Changemakers' competition&amp;#160;Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition, sponsored by Google.&amp;#160;Truebites aims to create a platform that would allow everyone to pa... &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/11/truebites-wins-ashoka-changemakers.html"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;div style="text-align: left;" dir="ltr"&gt;
&lt;div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"&gt;&lt;a style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OJ4T4dHmkfQ/TpYYQR8OpvI/AAAAAAAAAB4/qeABV5X5n58/s1600/journalism-tomorrow.png"&gt;&lt;img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OJ4T4dHmkfQ/TpYYQR8OpvI/AAAAAAAAAB4/qeABV5X5n58/s320/journalism-tomorrow.png" alt="" width="320" height="276" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We are happy to announce that &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/10/new-kind-of-news.html"&gt;Truebites&lt;/a&gt; is one of the winners of the Ashoka Changemakers' competition &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia"&gt;Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/em&gt;sponsored by Google.&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;Truebites aims to create a platform that would allow everyone to participate in the curation, validation and creation of news stories, without a centralized entity deciding what gets published or not (&lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/10/new-kind-of-news.html"&gt;read more here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia/entries/truebites"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br /&gt; &lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt; We wanted to thank everyone for their votes and support. There were almost 500 entries from all over the world and we were already proud to be selected as finalists by the impressive judges panel:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: auto;"&gt;
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&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/esther-wojcicki"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-182544.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/esther-wojcicki"&gt;Esther Wojcicki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Vice Chair, Board of Directors,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Creative Commons&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/isaac-lee"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-201368.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/isaac-lee"&gt;Isaac Lee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;President, News,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Univision&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/jared-cohen"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-182752.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/jared-cohen"&gt;Jared Cohen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Director of Google Ideas,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Google&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/john-lilly"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-191878.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/john-lilly"&gt;John Lilly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Partner,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Greylock Partners&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/justin-arenstein"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-181856.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/justin-arenstein"&gt;Justin Arenstein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Publisher and CEO,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;African Eye News Service (AENS) and HomeGrown Magazines&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/michael-maness"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-182537.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/michael-maness"&gt;Michael Maness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Vice President/Journalism and Media Innovation,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Knight Foundation&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/sanjana-hattotuwa-0"&gt;&lt;img class="imagecache imagecache-changemakers_competition_judges" style="border-color: initial; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; border-width: 0px;" title="" src="http://www.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/changemakers_competition_judges/pictures/picture-387.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="50" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 0.75; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"&gt;
&lt;div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"&gt;&lt;a style="border-bottom-color: #483f30; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #483f30; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none;" title="View user profile." href="http://www.changemakers.com/users/sanjana-hattotuwa-0"&gt;Sanjana Hattotuwa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="smaller" style="font-size: 0.75em;"&gt;Founding Editor,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span class="bold" style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Groundviews&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We would also like to extend our congratulations to the other 3 winners:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul style="text-align: left;"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://freedomboxfoundation.org/"&gt;FreedomBox&lt;/a&gt;: An integrated package of security and privacy tools to protect voice and text communications.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://crowdvoice.org/"&gt;CrowdVoice&lt;/a&gt;: A website for tracking and curating voices of protest.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://india.5thpillar.org/"&gt;5th pillar&lt;/a&gt;: A set of tools for empowering citizens to report corruption by SMS, phone or email.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div&gt;It's nice to see how well all these tools could be integrated and leverage each other. I hope we'll have the chance to work together.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;In the next few months, we will use the prize to build a free and open source prototype of Truebites and start involving the community to take this to the next level.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Thanks everyone again!&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #483f30; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9028461146492626696-1560513222877151119?l=ndt.instedd.org" alt="" width="1" height="1" /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?a=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?a=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:D7DqB2pKExk"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?i=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?a=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?i=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?a=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?a=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/instedd?i=gj2i6QonR-0:yQX9sQESL90:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/gj2i6QonR-0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/truebites-wins-ashoka-changemakers-competition/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/11/truebites-wins-ashoka-changemakers.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Why We Love Remindem</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/PlYK-cyWsI4/" /><category term="Blog" /><category term="Technologies" /><author><name>Brooke Estin</name></author><updated>2011-11-23T11:02:33-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4266</id><summary type="html">New and expecting mothers have a lot on their plates.  There are vitamins to take, doctors ... &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/why-we-love-remindem/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;New and expecting mothers have a lot on their plates.  There are vitamins to take, doctors appointments to remember and immunizations to schedule.  College students are invariably tasked with research projects, internship responsibilities to fulfill, exam dates and study group schedules.  Diabetics can feel overwhelmed with daily disease management, the insulin dosing schedules and dietary limitations to be mindful of.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff6600;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do these three groups have in common?  &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;They could all benefit from occasional reminders to keep them on track.  This is where one of our latest &lt;strong&gt;free and open source&lt;/strong&gt; tools, &lt;a href="../technologies/remindem/"&gt;Remindem&lt;/a&gt; comes into play.  Health care providers, professors or individuals can set up a system of unique, scheduled reminders which will be sent out via text message to subscribers.  We imagine that applications of Remindem will vary across countries and communities, but it could look like a schedule of text messages for HIV prevention and safer sex tips for high risk communities or a set of appointment reminders, pre-natal development milestones and suggestions for eating healthy that a health care provider offers to all expecting mothers.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The possibilities are endless, only limited by your imagination!  Remindem is not only free and open source but also integrates easily with many other &lt;a href="../technologies/"&gt;technologies in our tool kit&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff6600;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We want to hear from you!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Tell us in the comments below or on our &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/InSTEDD"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.facebook.com/InSTEDD"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; pages how you would use Remindem in your own life or to support humanitarian causes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Learn more at: &lt;a href="http://remindem.instedd.org/"&gt;http://remindem.instedd.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/instedd/~4/PlYK-cyWsI4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://instedd.org/blog/why-we-love-remindem/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://instedd.org/blog/why-we-love-remindem/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">iLab Latin America is Finalist in Changemakers’ Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instedd/~3/FYLjaXrJg8w/" /><category term="Blog" /><author><name>Brooke Estin</name></author><updated>2011-11-16T19:11:47-08:00</updated><id>http://instedd.org/?p=4252</id><summary type="html">Voting ends on November 23rd so get your vote in now and please help us spread ... &lt;a href="http://instedd.org/blog/citizen-media/"&gt;Read&amp;#160;more&amp;#160;&amp;#187;&lt;/a&gt;</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XgyPJG37SUs?hd=1" frameborder="0" width="560" height="315"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Voting ends on November 23rd so &lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia/entries/truebites"&gt;get your vote in now&lt;/a&gt; and please help us spread the word!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Over the last few years, with the advancement of technology, particularly mobile and the widespread adoption of social media, a shift has occurred in the way news is reported.  Now, people turn to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for real-time reports from the depths of the action.  We’ve experienced this democratization of media during natural disasters and historical moments like Arab Spring and The Occupy Wallstreet Movement.  Citizen media enables more voices from a community to contribute to the telling of critical events, particularly in developing areas where under-reporting occurs and access to information is limited.  &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We believe in supporting communities in the creation of tools that improve global health and safety and that is why we are thrilled that iLab Latin America was selected as one of 11 finalists out of over 420 entries in the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media competition! The iLab Latin America envisions &lt;a href="http://ndt.instedd.org/2011/10/new-kind-of-news.html"&gt;several tools that would de-structure journalism&lt;/a&gt; by breaking the information reported into small bites.  The system could be a database for both local citizen journalists and traditional media journalists to interact with each other.  Citizen reporters would be organized by topic and location tags so that journalists could easily identify who to connect with for clarification and reporting.  Anyone could subscribe to topics and follow along, adding their voice to the reporting process and receiving information from other citizens in their region.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;In order for iLab Latin America to develop citizen media reporting tools, we need your help!  Please vote for us in the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media Innovation competition.  The winner will receive $5,000 dollars toward the development of their tool.  &lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia"&gt;To place your vote&lt;/a&gt;, you will need to create a login for the Changemakers site, which you can do quickly using your Facebook account.  Once you are logged in, just click the vote button on &lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia/entries/truebites?breadcrumb_type=finalists"&gt;iLab Latin America’s project page&lt;/a&gt; and help us discover and share the true story, one bite at a time.&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="color: #ff0000;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Voting ends on November 23rd so &lt;a href="http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia/entries/truebites"&gt;get your vote in now&lt;/a&gt; and please help us spread the word!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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