health

This is the story of how a brother inspired an engineer to build a website that grew to help and transform the lives of many patients around the world. Inspired by his brother who was diagnosed with ALS, Jamie Heywood, an MIT-trained mechanical engineer, built a website called Patients Like Me that uses the power of collective information sharing to have such an impact.

Started as a place to share stories of personal illnesses, medication and treatment, Jamie tells us the story of how Patients Like Me grew into so much more, with the power to help explain and predict an illness' progress based on different treatment and medications, and even to contribute to and potentially accelerate medical research. The best part of the site? All that information is available to every one of its users.

By now you may have seen or heard of 2012, the movie that is.

I only saw it recently, and only by the grace of KLM’s onboard entertainment system. It is standard fare from the apocalypse genre. The Earth has a cyclical destiny, which involves at crucial points in this cycle a confrontation with some life-wiping monstrosity. In the movie 2012, the choice of monstrosity is also pretty standard fare – a disease in the Earth’s crust, mangling the Earth’s magnetic field, displacing the continents, and necessitating the building of a new Noah-type ark – or rather a number of them.

I was not so much worried about the plausibility of this disaster movie as I was about its fatalist non-consequentialism. There isn’t much we can do about unpredictable Earth-chewing bugs now, is there? To all intents and purposes, whatever moral was in the tale of 2012 can't matter much to the lives of you and me.

I have had another kind of apocalypse in mind these past few weeks. It would make for a most underwhelming disaster movie though, and I have no intent of dramatizing the issue. But as quasi-seismic events in the health of the species go – and the fate of the species and the planet are much conjoined nowadays, are they not? – this one is worth at least a cursory thought.

When the website of an "appropriate" technology takes the time to explicitly state the user requirements taken into condsideration when designing and creating the device, I become all the more interested in their product.

The team at JustMilk has done just that. Their goal is to prevent the transmission of HIV between mother and child.
"Our approach is to modify an existing nipple shield by adding a non-woven disk (cotton-wool) containing a common microbicide compound that inactivates the HIV without harming the baby.  This allows the mother to directly feed the baby rather than having to collect and heat the milk, which can result in social stigma."

I came accross the JustMilk team last year and had the pleasure of chatting with them. Since then, they have started researching the application of additional vitamins and minerals to the textile disk, which currently acts as the mechanism by which the breastmilk is filtered.

In addition to the six user requirements the JustMilk team has identified, I encourage you to read the testimonials recieved by professionals in HIV-affected regions. The information they provided to the team is enlightening, straightforward, and extremely thoughftul.

Today I had a quick chat with Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization. The WTO is committed to delivering healthier and safer sanitation around the world.

He talked about where he sees his organization going. Now that they've perfected a means of delivering toilets to those who need them, Jack wants to use that system to offer a platform for delivering numerous BOP products and services. Note: This video contains slang for and frank discussion of sewage.

Showing my nonprofit background, I asked Jack what he sees as the role of NGOs in the informational campaign he describes. Is this the sort of area where NGOs and social enteprises can partner with each other. Jack's wonderfully direct answer: "Yes, of course, but it's even better if it's a social enterprise and a social enterprise partnering with each other."

"The charity model," Jack said, "is, 'Prove to me that you are useless, helpless, and worthless, and I will show my great generosity in helping you.'"

See this older post for more on how Jack makes toilets sexy.

This video profiles Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Hilmi Quraishi's work with mobile innovations in rural India and demonstrates the power of collaboration between the private and citizen sectors. The video premiered during yesterday's panel session on building the business-social bridge.

Mobile Technology Inventions in Rural India: The Case for Building Business-Social Bridges from Cory Wilson on Vimeo.

Below is a longer version of the video.

Image Source: Boing Boing

I previously wrote about different technology-enabled clinics that are using different innovations—from low-cost ehealth tools to converting shipping containers into clinics—in India, Kenya, Pakistan, and the Dominican Republic.

There has been a ton of news and blog coverage about what has been happening in Haiti over the last two weeks, most of the information being not so great, while some is more hopeful. I am happy to share some new of the hopefull kind.

Adding to the list of previously mentioned clinics, these inflatable plug-and-play hospitals that Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) have deployed in Haiti are really fascinating. This post on Boing Boing shares video and an interview with two MSF employees about the hospital and the challenges and successes in setting it up.

Deadline Feb. 1, 2010

Apply for up to $650,000 for "Wireless Projects Demonstrating Promise Of Solving Critical Global Issues and mHealth." The Wireless Innovation Project identifies and rewards the most promising advances in wireless related technologies that can be used to solve critical problems around the globe. Although projects may be global in scope, applicants must be nonprofits, educational institutions or social entrepreneurs based in the United States. Up to $650,000 will be awarded to wireless projects demonstrating exceptional promise to solve a critical global issue in the following fields: education; health; access to communication; the environment; or economic development. Final winners will be announced on April 19, 2010 at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, California.

Find complete detailed information about eligibility and an application here.

This post contributed by Ashoka's Osman Ashai. The following is Part 3 in a case study series following Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi's collaboration with Microsoft to use mobile technology to educate the public and health care workers about Tuburculosis prevention and treatment.

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/focus2capture/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Ashoka Fellow Hilmi Quraishi and his organization, ZMQ, are working to tackle Tuberculosis in rural India through technology. With support from Microsoft and using their software, Quraishi and ZMQ have developed a two-pronged approach:

First: increase Tuberculosis awareness among the public.

Every year mega companies spend millions of dollars getting a spot in the super bowl commercials. This year Pepsi however decided to use the money for a different purpose—funding innovative project ideas of various levels and sizes!

Yes, you heard it right. They've decided to give money to YOU instead of the Super Bowl. The really cool thing is not only the ideas and projects can span a wide range of topics, but also be at different stages of development. They have grants as small as $5K for individuals looking for inspiration to get an idea off the ground, to those as big as $250K for organizations who can dedicate a lot of time and resources.

More details on how to get started in this video:


So what ya waiting for? Pop over to Pepsi Refresh and start innovating :D

Photo copyright, Newsweek, 2008

On this week's episode of the AshokaTECH Podcast, host Alex Budak interviews social entrepreneur Howard Weinstein, who is giving the gift of hearing to thousands in the developing world.  Batteries for hearing aids cost about $1US per week, which can be incredibly cost-prohibitive.  Weinstein developed an innovative way of recharging the hearing aids through solar power, reducing cost dramatically and allowing thousands to use hearing aids when they otherwise would not be able to do so. 

But the social change doesn't stop there.  Weinstein has created a sustainable business model in which hard-of-hearing kids from Botswana and Brazil train others in how to use and tune the devices -- creating jobs and long-lasting impact in communities around the world. 

Alex and Howard discuss the motivation behind social enterprise, tips for engaging a community, and how to take an idea and make it replicable across Geographies.

As always, be sure to follow Alex on Twitter, @TheBudak, for updates on the podcast and your chance to have your own questions answered in future interviews.