Androids in Africa : Please send us your Android phones...
Our use of the Android platform in East Africa for collecting animal disease data, sharing information and providing access to learning resources has come a long way in the last 3 years. We are now trying to encourage advanced Android users to send us their old handsets for use on our projects in Africa. This post is an attempt to summarise some of the experiences we have had to date and how any donated phones might be of value to our African partners....
How it all started....
Back in 2008 I traveled out to Tanzania with a group of vets to raise funds for the veterinary charity Vetaid by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. When we got down from the summit, I spent some time with the Masai cattle farmers to learn a little more about the problems they face and how Vetaid has been helping them by training barefoot vets or Community Animal Health Workers. Despite the very basic resources available to these field workers and the tough conditions, one thing that impressed me was that they were already all using basic Nokia phones to text questions about diseases to each other.
How it all started....
Back in 2008 I traveled out to Tanzania with a group of vets to raise funds for the veterinary charity Vetaid by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. When we got down from the summit, I spent some time with the Masai cattle farmers to learn a little more about the problems they face and how Vetaid has been helping them by training barefoot vets or Community Animal Health Workers. Despite the very basic resources available to these field workers and the tough conditions, one thing that impressed me was that they were already all using basic Nokia phones to text questions about diseases to each other.
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| Community Animal Health Worker in Siminijaro District, Tanzania 2008 Using ODK in Zanzibar In 2009 we started working with Vetaid to explore how we might use second generation smart phones to collect disease and vaccination data more effectively in the field. This front line surveillance is an important part of disease control for conditions such as East Coast Fever which kills many thousands of cattle in the area as well as detecting emerging epidemics such as avian flu which can kill people too. We teamed up with Kevin and Carl, two inspired Android developers fromNovoda, who started work (at no cost) on using the Open Data Kit developed by Yaw Aokwa and his team to develop a prototype data collection platform running on old G1 phones donated by colleagues. This was first tested in Zanzibar by a research team of veterinary students working on cattle disease surveillance. They also used the phones effectively to stay in touch using Twitter and did some initial education trials running videos off the Micro SD cards. This pilot was generally considered to be a success but there were some additional software and hardware issues we had not predicted. Next Steps - the EpiCollect Application Following on from the Zanzibar experience, we made a number of presentations of our work including to the 2010 Handheld Learning Conference, International Association for Medical Education 2010 and Africa Gathering 2010. Here we established links with a range of colleagues in the mobile sector including Niall Winters from the London Knowledge Lab, Guy Collender from the London International Development Centre and David Aanensen from Imperial College. We arranged a series of UK and Kenya/Tanzania meetings with our colleagues in Vetaid and also the new Google/Rockefeller SACIDS initiative. At about this time David had launched the EpiCollect application which allowed us to develop a range of GPS linked data forms to capture data on animal disease. This tool proved really popular with our colleagues in the field as they had no problem developing basic forms through a web interface whilst it was also possible to create more sophisticated linked forms when needed. Most importantly the system worked and in field trials working with Vetaid vets, they were able to collect quality vaccination data in the field for analysis by the programme.  Android Handsets Having developed the software application, the next challenge was to find sufficient handsets to run it on. We did some field usability testing of a range of different handsets ranging from the latest HTC Desire through to the low cost and locally sourced Huwaei and the old G1. The results indicated that the most important features were a physical keyboard, good screen resolution in strong sunlight, reasonable battery life and robustness. With these criteria, the G1 actually came out as the preferred handset despite its age and older design! At about the same time that we had decided to adopt the G1 as our main handset, I had a call from Fiona Lee of Google who had heard about our work in Kenya from Joanne Stevens in their local Nairobi office. Fiona offered to see if she could help find some second hand G1 phones and put us in touch with Paa Kwesi and Nicola Dixon at Google London. They put the word around the office and quickly came up with over 20 phones which staff donated when they migrated to the Nexus. It was a great day when we were able to bring in some of our African colleagues to collect these phones at Google London (and have lunch too!). What Next.... I spoke with the Head of Vetaid Kenya, Dr Gabriel Turasha yesterday (sadly Vetaid UK has been disbanded). He said that the donated phones are still in widespread use throughout Kenya. Some are in the hands of front line Community Animal Health Workers monitoring vaccination programmes whilst other are on loan to government vets who are involved with the FAO on a large scale disease programme. One of the great strengths of their use is that Gabriel can check the Google Map data for each phone to confirm where it is and how often it is being used. Interestingly most of the users have opted to insert their own SIM cards into the phone and cover the cost of data access themselves for the benefit of using a smartphone. |
