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Outstanding Leadership Stan Toler. Much of the data that is useful to nurses is not measured by physical instrumentation nor can it be readily coded as numerical or alphanumeric data. Nurses often require descriptive data, but whole-text data processing is in its infancy. Data must be accessed, analyzed, recombined, and presented in a useful format, but current data processing methods are also ill-suited to nursing needs. It can collect and analyze enormous amounts of data from multiple sources and over long lengths of time.
It can broaden the ability of nurses to consult, collaborate, and exchange information. Note : There is no right or wrong or good or bad place on the tail. There are just different places. From its early beginnings in South Africa in , FrontlineSMS has been totally focused on grassroots NGOs in the green space, an area which I believed back then was heavily underserved and to a large degree still is. Believe it or not, not everyone wants to build tools that can grow into large centralised solutions, which is how many people seem to define scale.
No one is ever going to run a nationwide election monitoring campaign running into millions of text messages using a single laptop, cable and mobile phone. Those that do then go and request it from the website. Everything is driven by the end user, who needs to be independently motivated to download and use the tool. The solution is designed to allow users to do everything themselves. No core FrontlineSMS implementations are driven by us, and none are our projects. Use is replicated by users sharing experiences, talking about their use of the tool to others, and growing numbers of champions who are either building their own solutions around FrontlineSMS, or bloggers and researchers who write about its use and impact.
Again, from the very beginning we have been unashamedly focused on our end user — NGOs in developing countries seeking easy-to-deploy mobile tools. Our end users are not programmers, coders or technical developers, and few if any of our FrontlineSMS user base would have any idea what to do with source code. We decided that we would focus on the open source community once we believed we had something worth working with, and that time is about now. In between working on everything else, we plan to launch a developer community soon.
FrontlineSMS only came about four years ago because of a critical lack of tools that allowed for group messaging without the need for the Internet. Building a tool which is able to operate in Internet-free zones has therefore been central to our thinking since the very beginning, and continues to this day. We are not anti-Internet, but realistic when it comes to its availability and reliability.
The alternative is more confusion, and more false arguments and comparisons. Now is a good-a-time as any to join the conversation. The workflow for FrontlineSMS forms is as follows:. Although we haven't yet tried out the full system, there are a number of nice features in the new client. There's a form designer included, as well as an Excel export for received forms. The mobile client will run on even very low-end Java phones we tested on the Nokia , which struggles to run many other Java applications.
Integration with an established system may also smooth the learning curve for organisations already using FrontlineSMS for bulk messaging. Use it: This is the simplest data collection system we've seen, and the client is the least resource-intensive.
While it doesn't allow you to change the data collection workflow or add new data types, it has the basics, and it's a full end-to-end system. You're also limited to SMS for data transfer at this stage, which can be expensive. Mobile Researcher A recent entry into the mobile data collection market, Mobile Researcher is an end-to-end data collection service rather than a user-managed application. Mobile Researcher handles all the system configuration and data management - all you need to do is choose your options, train your data collectors and then sit back and wait until you have enough data to export for analysis.
This software-as-service model means that you pay no setup costs, but instead are charged per completed form submitted to the system using 'credits' bought from the company. Having seen a short demo of the J2ME client at MobileActive08, we can definitely recommend it as a mature and easy-to-use product. As an added bonus, it runs on some very low-end Java phones, often a limitation of J2ME client applications. Two factors count against the system: the cost, which would be prohibitive for a large or long-running data collection project, and the fact that your data is hosted on Mobile Researcher's servers rather than you own.
This means you have to trust their privacy and security protection measures, which you might present problems if you work with sensitive data. Ep iSurveyor Episurveyor is a more complex data collection client application, targeted at PDAs and certain smartphones.
It was originally not designed as a real-time system - data collectors would go out, work offline storing completed forms to the device memory, and then go back to the office and upload the completed forms using the device sync functionality. Alternatively, there is now a wireless version available, and you can use this to submit forms via email.
EpiSurveyor also comes with a Windows-based form designer programme, which allows users to specify the forms to be used for data collection. The project is fully open source you can get the code on their Sourceforge project page and has an open feature list and a community mailing list.
This is always something to look for in an open source project, where community support can be the difference between success, and hours of fruitless hacking.
Good for: Of all the systems reviewed, EpiSurveyor is the most heavyweight. It supports some complex form features, and because it targets higher-end devices, it has good support for longer forms. It's not quite an end-to-end solution when it comes to collating and analyzing your data, you're on your own but the the form designer is a nice feature. If your data collection needs are complex and your budget permits you to consider high-end devices for your data collectors, EpiSurveyor is definitely worth considering.
Search this site. YouTube Video. Larry Dershem, Mar 24, , AM. Larry Dershem, Mar 22, , AM. In this section, we look at the following components: The data collection client interface, which the user interacts with to accomplish data collection and transmission.
The data transfer method, which dictates how the information input on the phone is transmitted to a central server for storage and retrieval. Server-side components to receive and store the data, and allow users to display and manage the database. These are: Fixed format SMS. The 'client application' in this case is the phone's built-in SMS functionality. The user writes and SMS in a predefined format, representing answers to successive questions.
RapidSMS is one system that uses this method. A J2ME application is written in the Java programming language, and loaded onto the phone over bluetooth or by downloading the application from the Internet. To use the client application, the data collector navigates through questions in an application on the phone, which collects the answers and submits the completed form to a server.
The questions can be hard-coded into the application, or read from forms downloaded to the phone. Web-based forms. The 'client application' for web-based forms is the phone's web browser.
Not just in developing a tool using these principles, but in helping create a non-profit technology organization focused on open these same fundamentals. That is, we believe that the best use and furtherance of our technology, and our organizations goals, is done with and by the greater community that grows around it.
We serve as a focal point from which this community gains energy and to act as a group which is dedicated to the core framework of the tool itself. In some cases closed-source options are just plain better, which is why I have no problem buying great apps for my PC, Mac or iPhone that make my life easier.
Good examples of this are the Firefox browser and WordPress blogging platform — possibly Android. A couple of weeks ago Microsoft announced their new Vine product.
It has a lot in common with Ushahidi, including sending and receiving of alerts via SMS and email. To be honest, we have no ownership of this idea, but what we do have is a question as to why Microsoft believes and works to create crisis and emergency systems in a closed way. It needs to be free, community owned, a service that just exists. Having met with the best and brightest of Microsoft Research, key members of the team behind Vine and the team behind the new version of Sharepoint and Groove, Microsoft have nothing that comes close to the capabilities of FrontlineSMS today with regards to forms based data transfers over SMS in austere conditions, which is precisely what is needed for decision support mechanisms and alerting post-crises.
It is not unlikely that this will become yet another failed attempt to override instead of collaborate with existing local solutions. Finally, if they really are about creating emergency and disaster software for use by normal people, then I would encourage them to not charge for it and to make it as open as possible for others to work with it, including Ushahidi. We all chuckled, and then gave a quick dig to the ribs of the devs doing the Android and J2ME apps, to get them going.
May 18, at am. Beyond cost, Open Source has the tremendous advantage of having a community around any project. One can only hope that a better understanding of community and having a solution better fit to the environment than whatever a Microsoft focus group churns out will ultimately win.
They give away software to and in some cases even pay African policy makers to integrate their systems. Foolishly, most African leaders fall for it, not understanding the implications and often not caring that it crushes the local markets chances of ever offering solutions or competing in anyway.
The only way to combat this is if local developers can rely on their policy makers, CEOs, Deans etc. Great article which articulates the issues well. I can second your comment about the outflow of budget to Euro-American companies — an endemic dependency and serious obstacle to the creation of local software economies.
It does not help that some international development agencies are funding and implementing FOSS certification programmes which, once again, create dependencies and cash flow to bodies outside Africa — whilst these same agencies actively negate efforts to create by-Africans-for-Africans FOSS certifications. We can only benefit from international collaboration but such efforts should have benefits that flow both ways. Important topic and well made points. As soneone who swims in both waters I personally refuse to side with either of the extermists.
I think there is plenty of room for OpenSource and closed source software to get along. The FUD peddled by both sides at times leaves me wondering whether to be amused or annoyed.
For instance it is perfectly possible to build software, closed or otherwise using completely free tools from Microsoft — development tools, database engine, etc. There is in fact a significant presence of free and open source tools and applications developed around Microsoft platforms. And on the other side there is absolutely no need to re-invent the wheel if something that scratches an itch is already there.
Moreso if the the invented wheel is absolutely the same as the existing wheel. I find it a waste of resources for Microsoft to re-invent already existing tools and technologies.
But anyway, this is stuff for a proper blog post. When Wal-mart opperates stores in the US, even at a small margin, that adds up to a lot of money. This leads to me to the first though on this whole subject.
Africa seems to be completely forgotten in this realm.
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