The Use of Mobile Phones as a Data Collection Tool: A Report from a Household Survey in South Africa data sheet 2227 Views
Author:
Mark Tomlinson, Wesley Solomon, Yages Singh, Tanya Doherty, Mickey Chopra, Petrida Ijumba, Alexander C Tsai and Debra Jackson
Publication Date:
Dec 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Background: To investigate the feasibility, the ease of implementation, and the extent to which community health workers with little experience of data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large baseline survey
Methods: A web-based system was developed to allow electronic surveys or questionnaires to be designed on a word processor, sent to, and conducted on standard entry level mobile phones.
Results: The web-based interface permitted comprehensive daily real-time supervision of CHW performance, with no data loss. The system permitted the early detection of data fabrication in combination with real-time quality control and data collector supervision.
Conclusions: The benefits of mobile technology, combined with the improvement that mobile phones offer over PDA's in terms of data loss and uploading difficulties, make mobile phones a feasible method of data collection that needs to be further explored.
Reliable Data Collection in Highly Disconnected Environments Using Mobile Phones data sheet 2079 Views
Author:
Brian DeRenzi, Yaw Anokwa, Tapan Parikh, Gaetano Borriello
Publication Date:
Aug 2007
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Over four and a half billion people live in the developing world and require access to services in the financial, agricultural, business, government and healthcare sectors. Due to constraints of the existing infrastructure (power, communications, etc), it is often difficult to deliver these services to remote areas in a timely and efficient manner.
The CAM framework has found success as a flexible platform for quickly developing and deploying high-impact applications for these environments. Many of the applications built with CAM have relied on a model where a field worker with a mobile phone regularly returns from a disconnected environment to one with connectivity. In this connected state, the phone and a centralized server can exchange information and get the collected data backed up on reliable media.
We propose extending CAM’s networking model to enable continual operation in disconnected environments. Using a set of heterogeneous paths made available through social and geographic relationships naturally present among workers, we describe a system for asynchronously routing data in a best-effort manner.
Monitoring and Evaluation Report of PDAs for Malaria Monitoring in Maputo Province, Mozambique: Final Report data sheet 1747 Views
Author:
Jamo Macanze
Publication Date:
Jan 2007
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The overall goal of the PDAs for Malaria Monitoring in Maputo and Gaza Provinces, Centre was to improve the management of public health dat using handheld computers in order to provide the malaria program the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI) with appropriate assessment tools and the ability to make informed decisions.
The specific objectives of the project that would contribute to the achievement of the overall goal were
to enable personnel from District level of the health service to collect data and provide it to the Provincial level in a timely fashion;
to develop training courses and appropriate collection tools designed for use with handheld computers; and
to evaluate the utility of handheld computers for the malaria control program to provide data rapidly and accurately to allow better targeting of interventions and resources.
AED-SATELLIFE developed and successfully deployed electronic data collection tools which catalog drug and rapid diagnostic test stocks; spray operators daily work performance; weekly health facility data; localization of individual households with GPS, including demographic data on household members, house structure and divisions; and health facility surveys linked to GPS positioning. Training materials were developed inPortuguese.
Independent evaluation confirmed that the electronic data collection/transmission tools proved to be a useful, adoptable, and result in higher user satisfaction compared to paper based approaches. Some challenges need to be addressed before there can be widespread adoption of the technology, such as limited infrastructure, especially cellular coverage.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage about contactless mobile payments in the U.S., a report on trends in technology and health, research that covers how mobiles can help economic development in Africa and the challenges that are hindering that development, a data gathering platform from Nokia that is now open-source, and the announcement of the mHealth Summit's keynote speaker.
Nokia Data Gathering, a Nokia-built software tool for mobile data collection, recently open-sourced its code. The software has two parts: a server-side tool that can be used to create forms and maintain a database, and a handset client for field workers to use for mobile, in-the-field data collection. Both pieces are licensed under the GPL version 2. The project site is available at Forum Nokia, and invites third-party patches.
Mobile Monitoring and Evaluation: Experiences from Pilot to National Scale Implementation data sheet 1757 Views
Author:
Eben Conley, Sarah Brown, Kieran Scharpey-Schafer
ISSN/ISBN Number:
978
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Implementation of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) programmes are predominantly dependant on paper forms to measure organisational impact. These forms are then manually captured into an electronic system for analysis. This methodology results in high costs, questionable data accuracy and long turnaround times. Additionally inadequately skilled employees, remote locations and high staff turnover add to these challenges. A solution that allows for flexibility and extendibility within the NGO sector is required to decrease costs and allow for NGO’s to focus their attentions on their main areas of expertise. One potential solution is the use of mobile phones to collect the data.
This paper presents the experiences of implementing a mobile phone based M&E system and the lessons learnt in scaling this system from pilot to national. These include system flexibility, easy-to-learn interfaces, identification of champions and detailed site assessments. Today the system is being used nationally, with over 70 000 electronic surveys submitted and over 300 facilitators using the system.
The usage of mobile phones is abundant in our daily lives in various aspects from making phone calls or sending text messages to checking e-mails or news updates to planning our activities or managing our budget. This project aims at making use of this wide spread usage of mobiles to help in the data collection process. It designs and develops a web based system called “MobiCollect” that is used for creating forms or questionnaires to be later accessed by the data collectors using their mobile phone web browser in order fill in the form with the appropriate data.
Once the system design and implementation is completed it will be tested and evaluated to ensure the satisfaction of at least the minimum requirements of the proposed system.
A how-to guide on using and implementing RapidSMS for mobile data collection and communication.
Ths manual give an overview for how to implement and use RapidSMS in a mobile data collection project. RapidSMS is a SMS framework for data collection, group coordination, and complex SMS workflows. The tutorial outlines when and when not to use RapidSMS, guides the user through project steps and milestones, outlines factors for a successful implementation, and provides worksheets for project planning. Example training materials are included.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the relationship between consumers and telecoms in Sierra Leone, potential problems with mobile phones for transparency in elections, law enforcement officials pulling evidence from iPhones, how international roaming charges were dropped in East Africa, and why geotagging photos may not be in your best interest.
The Mobile Minute, our new feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news. Today's stories are about the number of Google searches made on mobile phones, an updated version of the PDA survey kit, the relationship between ICTs and accountable governments, and an octopus-themed mobile app.
"Mobile Accounts for 10% of Google Searches, Says Analyst" This Read, Write, Web article looks at comScore search market data – and found that mobile phones are used to make more than 1 billion monthly Google searches in the U.S.
"WFP PDASurvey" The World Food Program released an updated version of its PDA-based data collection tool. The group says that the program "allows very large questionnaires to be built very rapidly and deployed onto many PDAs using flash memory cards."
"Full Circle: ANSA-Africa Newsletter" The latest ANSA-Africa Newsletter looks at government accountability and the role ICTs can play in giving citizens a means of expression. Other topics include local government social media and responsibility, ICTs in Kenya, and creating connections in Bangladesh. (via Accountability 2.0)
"Paul the Psychic Octopus Gets an App" If you find yourself without psychic guidance now that Paul the Octopus (who gained fame by correctly predicting all of Germany's World Cup matches, as well as the final) has retired, a new iPhone app called "Ask the Octopus Oracle" can fill the void.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
The Case for mHealth in Developing Countries data sheet 2569 Views
Author:
Patricia N. Mechael
Publication Date:
Jan 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to encourage reflection and discussion around the potential of mHealth in developing countries and to consider how early experiences can inform the way forward. Toward this aim, I synthesize many reviews and presentations from the eight years I have been studying the evolution of mobile phones and health in developing countries. I include observations and discussions that are now shaping the creation of mHealth as a field, to highlight the ingredients we need to move from a series of pilot projects and isolated business opportunities to a full-scale maximization of health-related benefits.
I begin by reviewing the strategic priorities within global health, where mobile telephony can have the greatest impact, along with organic health-related uses of mobile phones, and examples of formal mHealth interventions. I then demonstrate the potential for mobile phones to become an extension and an integral component of eHealth, describing how information and communication technology (ICT) can be used in health care, as well as mHealth, as a subset of mServices: using mobile devices to deliver services such as banking and health. I also show how trends and interests are converging among key stakeholders within the mHealth ecosystem, thus forming a foundation on which we can scale up and sustain more and better mHealth activities. Finally, I present some tactical guidance for a way forward that will further the objectives of both public health and business, particularly in outreach efforts to emerging markets, the bottom of the pyramid, and the next billion mobile phone subscribers.
Every ChildCounts: The Use of SMS in Kenya to Support the Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition & Malaria in Children data sheet 2743 Views
Author:
Berg, Matt, Wariero, James, and Modi, Vijay
Publication Date:
Oct 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Baseline under five child mortality in Sauri, Kenya as of 2005 was estimated to be 148 deaths per 1000 live births. By 2008, the rate had dropped to 81 deaths per 1000 live births due to Millennium Village Project (MVP) interventions. A review of child deaths revealed that among other causes, such as malaria, acute febrile illnesses, diarrheal illnesses and HIV, malnutrition contributed to more than 50% of all child deaths. Community health workers (CHWs) led several interventions, namely community-based management of acute malnutrition, home-based testing for malaria and diarrheal illnesses and immediate dispersal of appropriate treatments.
To support these interventions, MVP ran a pilot project where CHWs were equipped with mobile phones to use SMS text messages to register patients and send in their data with the goal of improving child health and empowering community health workers. This report seeks to detail the methods used, illustrate early results and initial findings of the ChildCount mHealth platform that CHWs have now been using since early July of 2009.
Engineering Rural Development data sheet 2779 Views
Author:
Parikh, Tapan S.
Publication Date:
Jan 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Presented here is an overview of the operational needs of NGOs and CBOs and the role information systems can play to increase their accountability and efficiency. Information systems need to fit the diverse operational needs of NGOs and CBOs, which include coordinating activities, training and monitoring staff, documenting results, accounting, reporting, decision making and learning, acquiring external information and encouraging community participation.
Unfortunately, there are gaps in information systems that impede the ability of NGOs to embrace ICT. To name a few, the lack of open, accessible, cross-platform mobile development tools, limited opportunities and resources provided to local small software companies to engage with NGOs, and the lack of long distance networking technologies to reach remote locations.
Two examples of technologies that were applied successfully are shared: Self Help MIS, an application to monitor activities of small microfinance organizations and credit groups and DigitalICS, an application for data collection used by agricultural cooperatives. The author stresses that ICTs should be viewed as a tool to allow local change agents to be more effective and accountable and shows how computing is able to support local organizations by inspiring innovation, implementation and dissemination of projects, and measuring impact.
Budgets, Batteries, and Barriers: PDA Implementation Issues for NGOs data sheet 2646 Views
Author:
Kanchan Banga, Tanti Liesman, Alicia Meulensteen, Jennifer Wiemer
Publication Date:
Apr 2009
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
What prevents humanitarian non-government organizations (NGOs) from adopting technology that can potentially improve their operations and response time? Global Relief Technologies, a producer of handheld data collection devices, asked a New York University Capstone Team to research the barriers to NGO PDA adoption. The Capstone Team conducted 17 interviews with nine organizations, from animal welfare to humanitarian relief, to discover the financial, technical, and institutional barriers preventing groups from implementing technology into their field programs. The Team also conducted two case studies of groups currently using PDA technology, one domestic and one international, to explore in depth the factors that went into the decision making processes these groups followed in their technology acquisition decisions.
Components of SMS-Based Data Collection and Service Delivery data sheet 2913 Views
Author:
Matt Berg
Publication Date:
May 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
An overview of the components, approaches and techniques used to build mobile phone-accessible applications that use SMS text messages as a conduit for data collection and service delivery. SMS-based applications represent a paradigm shift allowing innovative new approaches to monitoring and data collection fundamentally changing the way we can approach the delivery of critical health, economic and social services in resource-poor settings. SMS has the potential to fill significant connectivity and service gaps, particularly for the world’s poor, until data networks and phones that can support them become more ubiquitous.
This guest post was written by Nicolas di Tada, Director of Platform Engineering at InSTEDD. He writes about an ingeniousway for health workers to accurately transmit semi-structured data via mobile. His post is reprinted here with permission.
During August 2009, we went on a number of field trips to health centers in remote areas of Thailand and Cambodia. The idea was to conduct a few usability tests on Geochat syntax alternatives that we were exploring. Our goal was to simplify the interaction between health workers and the system to ultimately allow them to report disease cases in a semi-structured way.
The case information always originates at the local health center level - this is where the patient comes and gets diagnosed. Most of the case reports are made through phone calls to the district level (the higher administrative level). Case details get lost when the district level summarizes the information by disease and reports the quantity of each to the provincial level.
The use of mobile phones for quick-time data collection is proliferating around the world. To get a better understanding of the scale and scope of these new data collection efforts, we partnered with UN Global Pulse initiative to conduct a survey of present and planned mobile data collection efforts. The survey results will help identify new, quick-time data sources.
The first findings of the global survey have been compiled in an inventory. The inventory is a living document that will be regularly updated as we become aware of new projects. If you are managing a mobile data collection project and you would like to have it featured in the inventory, please contact us or leave a comment.
We are also currently conducting for UN Global Pulse a mobile phone survey across multiple countries including Uganda, India, Mexico, Ukraine and Iraq. The survey is being conducted via text message and uses simple questions to understand how populations in different parts of the world perceive. We are drawing on our extensive network of partners on the ground to conduct the survey and will make the results publicly available (albeit in an anonymous and aggregate format). The survey is an exercise in rapid, bottom-up data collection. Questions in the survey focus on economic perceptions, including:
As we are completing an inventory of mobile date collection projects around the world that are focused on vulnerable populations and early warning, we've come across a few efforts that are worth highlighting. One is the SMS and PDA-based surveying of the World Food Programme (WFP). WFP's food security monitoring systems are set up in many countries. While some countries are still submitting paper records, there is a push to incorporate PDAs or SMS data transmission for faster and more reliable monitoring of food security.
The data collected includes both food security baseline data and food insecurity indicators. The bulk of WFP's data collected focuses on nutritional indicators, market prices, import, cross border trades, socioeconomic indicators, and health indicators. The UN agency is trialing both FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS, two mobile data collection software tools, in its current projects, as well as PDAs but is likely going to standardize its operations using one of the two with some custom gateway software.
In the process of collecting data, WFP always collaborates with governments and other UN partners. WFP staff are involved with the supervision, training and coordination but but the people who conduct interviews and collect the data are usually government staff, university students, or NGO workers As one WFP staffer noted, "We have huge armies of data collectors."
The scope of the work is accordingly large. Some of the efforts cover an entire country. In Senegal, for example, WFP has 250 numerators covering the country – 22 teams of 11 people each who are collecting data for six weeks, visiting 2,000 villages.
The video below features George Muammar of the WFP Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping Unit. He describes rapid data collection in an Emergency Food Security Assessment in Goma, N. Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mapping SMS Incident Reports: A Review of Ushahidi and Managing News data sheet 17498 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
In this how-to, we test out two systems for SMS incident mapping: Ushahidi and Managing News. Incident mapping is a simple but powerful concept that does what it says - using SMS to report a given incidence and mapping the data geographically. This article compares the two platforms, their pros and cons, and outlines when to use either.
In this how-to, we test out two systems for SMS incident mapping. Incident mapping is a simple but powerful concept that does what it says - using SMS to report a given incidence and mapping the data geographically.
It has been used in various scenarios ranging from reports from natural disasters to tracking violent crime, citizen reporting in elections.
Ushahidi, a platform for map and time-based visualizations of text reports, has been used most prominently in crisis mapping. The first instance of Ushahidi tracked the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007, closely followed by an instance covering outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa in early 2008. Following the Haiti earthquake in early 2010, an Ushahidi deployment at Tufts University provided a platform for aggregating, translating and disseminating incident reports and requests for assistance. Ushahidi is an open-source PHP/Javascript platform.
EMIT: Mobile Monitoring and Evaluation data sheet 4900 Views
System Description
EMIT is an application that allows facilitators to capture field data on cellphones and submit it via GPRS to a centralised database. Surveys are customised and data is monitored, verified and prepared for analysis in real time. Read more here.
From Pilot to National
The pilot was performed with the Community Media Trust (CMT), who used EMIT as a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool to capture information on their HIV prevention and treatment literacy sessions in clinics, their training programme and open day events held in public spaces in communities where they work. CMT had been struggling with long turnaround times:
As part of a "Mobile Telemedicine" initiative undertaken by the Millennium Villages Project in Ghana, I have been researching and documenting existing software platforms that enable and support remote consultation activities.
Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients’ health status or for educational purposes. It includes consultative, diagnostic, and treatment services.
Mobile health information technology (mHealth) typically refers to portable devices with the capability to create, store, retrieve, and transmit data in real time between end users for the purpose of improving patient safety and quality of care.
On Wednesday evening I was lucky enough to attend the first ever "Failfaire", organized by MobileActive.org where several brave souls agreed to present their failed "Information Technology for Development" projects, explaining why they failed and what they learned from them.
I work on knowledge management in UNICEF, and have a strong interest in improving how we learn from our experience. This event (which was certainly not a failure!) was interesting to our work from at least two points of view:
1. The lessons learned from the projects themselves
2. The idea for the event itself and whether this might be something we could try ourselves.
There were four presentations during the meeting:
Bradford Frost presented on Mobileimpact.org a project to recycle old cellphones and donate them to Africa.
This guest post was written by Linda Raftree who is using social media and ICTs in youth and community development work in Africa and elsewhere. She works for the NGOPlan. Her article is re-posted here with permission.
Over the past few months, I’ve been supporting the development of a mobile data gathering/ crowd sourcing and mapping workshop for youth in Benin. The training is part of a broader initiative to reduce violence against children. We’ve decided to use Frontline SMS and Ushahidi as tools in the project because we think (and want to test whether) mobile data collection/ crowd sourcing incidents of violence will allow for a better understanding of what is happening in this area. We also think that geo-visualizing reports of violence against children may have an impact on decision makers and might allow them to better plan prevention and treatment programs and services.
A Guide to Mobile Security for Citizen Journalists data sheet 15170 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
Citizen journalism, and with it the rise of alternative media voices, is one of the most exciting possibilities for mobile phones in activism.
Mobile phones are used to compose stories, capture multi-media evidence and disseminate content to local and international audiences. This can be accomplished extremely quickly, making mobile media tools attractive to citizens and journalists covering rapidly unfolding events such as protests or political or other crises. The rise of mobiles has also helped extend citizen journalism into transient, poor or otherwise disconnected communities.
However, for those working under repressive regimes, citizen journalism can be a double-edged sword. Anything you create and disseminate can be used against you, whether through the legal system or in other more sinister forms of suppression.
This guide for Mobile Security gives an overview and provides recommendations for secure browsing, secure content uploading, and using "throw-away phones" for organizing and communications. We note that secure solutions for mobile communications are currently lacking, however!
Citizen journalism, and with it the rise of alternative media voices, is one of the most exciting possibilities for mobile phones in activism.
As we are getting ready for our event in Washington DC tomorrow that will focus on New Tools for Better Elections, we are excited to see that more open source options for mobile data collection and analysys are becoming available than ever sbefore. Development Seed, one of the most promising Drupal development shops around right now, has been an innovator in developing platforms for data analysis, in particular.
This article describes the latest release of its open-source platform Managing News, and its integration with a low-cost SMS gateway for mobile data collection. It was written by Development Seed's Robert Soden and is republished here with permission.
This release is particularly exciting for us because it ties together two of our core projects in such a way that each is made better. SlingshotSMS is a lightweight SMS gateway that can be run off of a USB drive, needing only a GSM modem and an internet connection to act as a bridge between mobile phones and the web. Managing News is a powerful data aggregator and visualization tool that lets distributed teams work together to make large amounts of information useful. Together, they provide an extensible framework for teams conducting mobile data collection projects in the field.
Extensibility is key here because we need this to meet a wide variety of use cases in order for it to be useful. We have been particularly focused on use cases related to election monitoring, but this is just one of many possible applications. Here's a graphic that Saman made illustrating how the system works:
This technology is meant to accompany your existing processes of data collection. You have people in the field, they have cellphones, you have a phone back in headquarters, and they can text in messages to you that are then relayed to a visualization space, which helps keep you and your team on the same page.
Since SlingshotSMS runs on a USB drive, you just plug it in, plug in your phone, and set up what website you want to have the SMS messages sent to. The SMS messages are turned into RSS 2.0 and PUSHed, like as a fat ping. You computer just needs internet to send these messages.
Going back to this election monitoring example, here you see the election monitor is texting in that the polling station is closed. You'll notice that the text message contains a few things: a polling station ID, the word "closed", and the word "security." These are key terms we are going to want to look for on the Managing News side to flag.
SlingshotSMS just pushes the data up to Managing News. The Managing News site will have a custom parser that will break up this text message, pulling out key words and numbers.
Customizing SMS parsing for each project
Out of the box, the Managing News/SlingshotSMS bridge simply accepts the SMS and incorporates it into the default Managing News workflow, ignoring important information in this example like the fact the polling station is closed and there is a security issue. This is where the pluggable nature of Managing News proves its worth. It is simple to write a custom parser that replaces the default parser that ships with Managing News. With some creative use of the Drupal taxonomy system to filter incoming results into Managing News channels and some very basic regex, you can quickly have a system that is able to capture this data and let Managing News users react to it. We'll publish a blog post soon explaining exactly how to do this.
Authentication
Authentication of incoming SMS messages is vital in these situations, and we took extra care to make sure the Managing News Slingshot feature will only receive data from authorized sources. The framework is dependent on the Drupal KeyAuth module which allows signed messages to pass between a SlingshotSMS installation and Managing News. When setting up the Managing News Slingshot feature, users are given public and private keys that they then copy into the SlingshotSMS configuration file. In the future we are considering switching to an OAuth based solution.
Editors Note: We will test-run Managing News and Slingshot in an upcoming software review but meanwhile congratulate Development Seed on the ongoing efforts in building better open source tools for mobile data collection and analysis.