Mobiles in Zanzibar

The RVC Undergraduate Research Team has just returned from their project on East Coast Fever in the cattle of Zanzibar. This project also served as a pilot for the use of Google Android Platform devices for the collection of field data via the Google Open Data Kit. The project was a big success as over 400 animals were sampled from all parts of the main island.

The devices were also a huge hit with the team who found them very easy to use for both collecting physical exam data and updating Twitter, Facebook, and the team blog. The project hopes to provide answers to the Zanzibar Government about which vaccine strains to use as well as helping this exciting new mobile technology through its growing pains.

Handheld Learning Conference

Nick Short and Andrew Hagner gave this presentation at the Handheld Learning 2009 conference in October 2009. They described how in Tanzania, the Royal Veterinary College has been working with aid projects and government services to explore the potential of mobile devices. By using the GPS geo-spatial functionality of the newer smart phones it is now possible to accurately track the spread of diseases such as avian flu. Working with the Google Android platform, the team have now developed a set of phone based forms which can capture and transmit key disease data to a central server.