m4d | TechChange | The Institute for Technology and Social Change

We’re excited to be mentioned in the New York Times in an article on mobile technology for social good!

The article, titled “Ubiquitous Across Globe, Cellphones Have Become Tool for Doing Good”, discusses how mobile phones are becoming more useful beyond entertainment in developing countries and emerging markets. Increasingly, organizations are using SMS text messages to provide goods and services including water, energy, financial services, healthcare, and education.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The number of [mobile public-private partnerships] seems likely to increase. “The development community is eager to learn more about how to use mobiles effectively,” said Nick Martin, a founder of TechChange, a social enterprise based in Washington that educates development practitioners via online courses.

Mr. Martin said his most popular course has been Mobiles for Development. In the last three years, TechChange has taught the course eight times to nearly 400 participants from over 60 countries.

MHealth, or mobiles used for health services, is the most “evolved” of the mobile sectors, Mr. Martin said. Large-scale campaigns in mHealth have focused primarily on maternal health and vaccination campaigns.

Check out the entire article in the New York Times here.

Meet Carolyn Florey, this week’s featured TechChange alumna who we interviewed this week in her office at the World Bank. A serial TechChange participant of over five courses to date, Carolyn started taking TechChange courses in 2011 to supplement her Master’s program at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and has since been coming back for more continuing education in her ICT4D career.

Read Carolyn’s story below:

What interested you in taking TechChange courses? As a graduate student of International Development at Johns Hopkins SAIS, I wanted to focus on tech innovation in developing countries. I had taken a course at SAIS on the Politics of Humanitarian Aid that touched a bit on the use of technology for crisis mapping and disaster relief and wanted to learn more. I enrolled in TechChange’s TC103: Tech Tools and Skills for Emergency Management and was hooked. From there, I crafted an independent study around the format and content of TechChange courses.

What did you find useful from TechChange courses that keeps you coming back? Based on my experience taking TechChange courses in Mobiles in Development, mHealth, mData, mAccess, and Digital Organizing and Open Government, I continue taking TechChange courses for professional development and networking in my industry. Here’s why:

TechChange is at the pulse of ICT4D. TechChange is great at weaving together the application of technology across sectors and industries. You always need to keep up with what’s happening, especially in this field. They’re always updating the syllabi to share the latest industry information and inviting the most relevant industry experts as guest speakers. I found that TechChange always offered courses with both breadth and depth. For example, TC105: Mobiles in International Development was a good introduction for cross-sector applications of different mobile tools, while TC309 on mHealth let me narrow my focus to relevant topics for my daily work in the Global Health Bureau at USAID.
Course format and flexibility. In graduate school, I was working 30 hours a week and going to school full time with a five-course workload, so I needed the flexibility that TechChange gave to supplement my curriculum at SAIS. In my independent study, TechChange courses were helpful resources when I wrote papers and organized events for the SAIS Careers in Development club. The format and content is convenient to access as live events are recorded and archived, and course materials are available even 4 months after a course ends.
Learning industry lingo and key players. One valuable take away from TechChange courses is learning key terms and industry influencers to build and demonstrate expertise in ICT4D. For example, the mHealth content I was exposed to in TC105 came through in my interview for my former role at USAID, and I think ultimately helped me get the job.

What impact has TC105 had on you and your career? TechChange is part of my regular continuing education to stay up-to-date with the most relevant information on the ICT4D industry. I’ve also made some very meaningful connections through my TechChange courses. At this point in my career, TechChange has evolved for me to become a valuable networking tool. One example of this was the TechChange happy hour during the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC last December that brought together participants of the mHealth TC309 course and attendees of the Summit.

What advice would you give to students taking TC105 or any TC course?

Make attending live events a priority. Look at the live event discussions as part of your continuing education. Rarely will you get an hour of access to these industry experts.
Focus on what you’re most interested in. If you’re juggling work, a TechChange course, and sometimes other courses as well, all the information can get overwhelming. Make sure to review the TechChange course syllabus ahead of time and focus on the things you’re interested in, prioritizing one week’s content over another if necessary.
Read through other participants’ comments and questions. Often, other participants will have experience you don’t, so they’ll have some informed questions and insightful comments.

About Carolyn Florey

Carolyn Florey is an Operations Officer at the World Bank Institute’s Innovation Labs. Prior to joining WBI, Carolyn worked as a Private Sector Partnerships Specialist at USAID, focusing on mobile technology and health partnerships. She has worked in the ICT for development space for the past few years at organizations such as Jhpiego, NetHope, the Federal Communications Commission, and Earth Institute across sectors including mHealth, mobile money, women’s access and eAgriculture. She also worked at the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank’s Development Marketplace, a women’s health NGO in Delhi (Breakthrough), and as a Fulbright grantee in South Korea. She has an MA in International Development from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a BA from Tufts University. You can find Carolyn on Twitter @carolynflorey.

As TechChange and our alumni community continue to grow, we’re sharing the stories of some of our rockstar alumni who have taken the tools they’ve learned and resources from their TechChange courses to make an impact. This week, we traveled to the OpenGov Hub to talk to FrontlineSMS Project Director Trevor Knoblich, who participated in our TC105: Mobiles for International Development course in March-April of 2012. Pursuing his interest in mobile technology in humanitarian response and journalism, Trevor combined his past background with his new connections and knowledge from TC105 to successfully land a job at FrontlineSMS.

Here is Trevor’s story, in his own words.

Why did you decide to take Mobiles for International Development?

Technology in humanitarian assistance was rare in back 2009. Back then, I remember how there was not yet much data sharing and effective data management between aid agencies. As a journalist working in humanitarian response, I became interested in how mobile technology could address various challenges throughout the world. Through my own research, I heard about different projects that involved data mapping and reporting of challenges with service delivery, such as infoasaid, but it was difficult to find a one-stop resource that gave me a good sense of emerging technology in humanitarian work. I wanted to know, what’s happening around the world? What tools are available for me to find out? And what tools are appropriate for my organization?

What was useful to you from TC105?

After doing a search on Google, I found TC105 and immediately enrolled in the course to get an overview of how mobile technology is being applied across international development. I found three key features of TC105 very valuable to me: the relevant information, the interactive experience, and the access to a network of experts in mobile tech.

A central hub for the latest information for mobiles in development. TechChange’s TC105 became a central hub for emerging info and latest applications of mobile technology in the developing world. The TechChange team did a great job at selecting the most relevant and useful information for participants in the course by pulling all types of resources into one space. They included industry reports, real-world and current examples of tools like Magpi and FrontlineSMS, and practical case studies that inspired participants to try the tools out.
Interaction, participation, and global dialogue. The unique interaction built into this TechChange course platform encouraged participation among my classmates. TechChange did a good job of getting participants to talk to each other with game mechanics. I liked the small size of the class that had ongoing global discussion forums (sometimes at 03:00 AM in certain places in the world) and incentives for me to stay actively engaged throughout the entire course. Live demonstrations of the mobile tools discussed in TC105 changed my perception and understanding of how some of those tools were actually used in real life.
Access to a network of industry experts. TechChange invited and vetted an impressive lineup of global experts that presented for TC105. The “Live Event” discussion sessions were especially useful because real practitioners shared their anecdotes of the daily realities they face, and often shared industry resources such as website links and reports that sometimes are not yet on the course syllabus. For example, one of the speakers I remember most was Amy O’Donnell. She was representing FrontlineSMS and was extremely knowledgeable about community radio. In her discussion, she shared research papers and industry knowledge on best practices in the mobile tech space. Beyond these live video conference discussions, TechChange is always pushing for face to face connections when they can through alumni happy hours and a general open door policy.

How did TC105 ultimately impact you and your career?

Taking TC105 ended up being a smart career move. By keeping in touch with Amy O’Donnell, with whom I shared a common communications-oriented background, I eventually landed a job at FrontlineSMS as Project Director for the Knight Media Project. In this role, I manage grants and program design by connecting journalists with FrontlineSMS mobile technology for data management. It’s inspiring work, as I help journalists coordinate their staff, freelancers and citizen journalists, as well as reach out to a broader audience.

Advice from Trevor for taking TC105:

Leverage TC105 within your own organization. If you’re advocating for your organization to adopt these new mobile tools and applications, you will have a variety of useful materials from TC105 to help make your case.
Take TC105 first. Before taking any of the 200 or 300 level courses, TC105 gives you a good overview of emerging mobile technology and will help guide your selection for a deeper dive specific applications of mobile phones..
Participate as much as you can. You’ll ultimately get more out of the course the more engaged you are with your classmates, the professionals who are presenting, and the TechChange staff.

About Trevor

Trevor joined FrontlineSMS in June 2012, and leads FrontlineSMS’ Knight Media Project. Prior to joining FrontlineSMS, Trevor worked as a humanitarian response coordinator with Lutheran World Relief, developing practices and protocols for emergency response in developing countries. His experience includes developing mapping and tracking systems for deployment of humanitarian aid. Before that, Trevor worked as a federal policy reporter in Washington, DC. His role allows him to combine his skills and experience in both international development and journalism. You can find him on Twitter @mobiletrevor.

To enroll in the next TC105 session, please click here.

With high expectations for mobile health initiatives, and a proliferation of pilot projects (see this map from Uganda), it can be easy to forget that the mHealth field is still young. Like any emergent industry, mHealth is currently experiencing growing pains, a few of which were highlighted by Tina Rosenberg in her recent New York Times article, “The Benefits of Mobile Health, On Hold”.

In the article, Rosenberg raises a number of important points. She cites, for example, the misalignment between expectations and current realities in mHealth:

“Roughly a decade after the start of mHealth, as the mobile health field has come to be known, these expectations are far from being met. The delivery system is there. But we don’t yet know what to deliver.”

She also highlights the pilot fatigue that has stricken mobile-saturated countries such as Uganda and South Africa, as both public and private sector actors rush to become first-movers in the mHealth space. In some cases this has led to lack of coordination and limited impact.

But there is a silver lining. New research is underway in the mHealth space, and leading actors in are learning from past mistakes to design more effective platforms. Projects such as UNICEF’s Project Mwana have successfully introduced simplicity to a complex health system. And stakeholders are beginning to wake up to the fact that technology is only one part (and often the easiest part) of the equation.

This issue was addressed by Patricia Mechael, executive director of the mHealth Alliance, in the NY Times article: “We can get excited about the shiny new object, but the real impact comes from thinking about the cultural and professional context in which it’s being implemented.” How are mHealth platforms adapting to new realities, and reacting to emergent challenges?

This will be a key point of discussion in our upcoming Mobile Phones for Public Health online certificate course, in which Mechael will speak as a guest expert. The course, which begins next week and runs from June 3 to June 28, already has participants signed up from over 25 countries.

Through case studies, guest expert interviews, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises and live demonstrations of mHealth tools, the course will showcase how mobile technologies are revolutionizing global health systems – and how various challenges can be overcome. While current mHealth projects may not yet be meeting lofty expectations, they are certainly moving in the right direction.

For even more information about the course, visit the course page or take a look at the syllabus. To make sure you get a seat, fill out an application here and enroll today!

Our mHealth: Mobile Phones for Public Health Online Certificate course will run for its second time from June 3rd – 28th and we couldn’t be more excited about it. Along with The mHealth Alliance, we have had six months to reflect on course feedback and refine curriculum to make sure we are offering the most comprehensive and enjoyable online instruction possible.

Twitter Chat Contest:

Want to win a free seat? Then join us for a Twitter chat using #mHealth101 on Thursday, May 17th at 2 pm EDT to be entered in a random drawing! @Techchange and@mHealthAlliance will be co-hosting the event and will be discussing course curriculum, mHealth trends, and case studies. More details to come but tweet at @TechChange or @mHealthAlliance if you have questions and we look forward to having you join us!

What is the Course Structure?

Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with leading applications developers, and learn from practitioners who have had significant experience in implementing mobile phone based communication systems around the globe.

The entire course is delivered online. The total time commitment is a minimum of 2-5 hours a week. The course is designed to be highly interactive and social, but we also work hard to ensure that the majority of the content can be experienced in a self-paced manner. It will feature one or two real-time interactions each week, such as live discussions, live expert interviews, and live simulations. In order to accommodate busy schedules of mission staff from around the world, we’ve set up a learning environment where participants have plenty of options to explore content that is most relevant to them through live content and interactions, readings, and videos.

Facilitators will produce weekly audio podcast recaps for participants to catch up on key conversations and topics. Participants can also access all course content six months after course completion so the material can be revisited later.

Schedule:

● Week 1: Introduction to Mobile Health

● Week 2: Strengthening Health Systems

● Week 3: Moving Towards Citizen-Centered Health

● Week 4: Large Scale Demonstration Projects

For even more information about the course, visit the course page or take a look at the syllabus. To make sure you get a seat, fill out an application here and get enrolled.

We’re excited to partner with the mHealth Alliance yet again to offer our Mobile Phones for Public Health for open enrollment. And we think it matters: When it comes to IC4D (or M4D) projects, even the best technology is often not as helpful as the latest best practices. Patty Mechael, the Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance, was recently quoted in an NYT article about lessons learned from the past ten years of “mobile phones for public health” concluded:

“The tech is only as good as the people it is connecting or system it’s connected to,” Mechael said. ”We can get excited about the shiny new object, but the real impact comes from thinking about the cultural and professional context in which it’s being implemented.”

That same article cast a skeptical eye on the impact of many mHealth programs to date, but singled out Project Mwana as being successful on a large scale in Zambia and Malawi for testing babies of H.I.V.-positive women. When asked to describe what makes Mwana work, Erica Kochi, the co-leader of tech innovation for UNICEF (and confirmed speaker in our upcoming course) described: “Incredible simplicity….It’s not trying to replace the health information system. For its users, it makes things easier rather than adding more

Nick Martin interviewing Merrick Schaefer

mHealth Interview with Merrick Schaefer on Project Mwana

complexity to an already difficult, challenging health system.”

But mHealth solutions aren’t as simple as scaling successful programs irrespective of context. It requires creating an ongoing dialogue between public health professionals, the medical community, technologists, and government funders.

To that end, we’ve attempted to not just build a successful-project showcase, but a conversation that includes the following speakers and organizations:

Robert Fabricant, Frog Design
Gustav Praekelt, Praekelt Foundation
Alain Labrique, JHU University
Sarah Emerson, Center for Disease Control Tanzania
Erika Cochi, UNICEF Innovation
Yaw Anokwa, Nafundi
Martin Were, Regenstrief Institute; Hamish Fraser, Partners in Health
Armstrong Takang, Federal Ministry of Health
Kirsten Gagnaire, MAMA Global
Lesley-Anne Long, mPowering Frontline Workers; Sandhya Rao, USAID

Class starts June 3rd. Visit the mHealth course page to apply and reserve your spot today. Seats are filling up quickly. We hope that you’ll join the conversation!

On February 26, USAID received the “Best Government Policy for Mobile Development” award at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2013. And while the Mobile Solutions team was receiving an award in Barcelona, TechChange and the MS team were also receiving over 1,500 mobile poll responses from recipients in DRC taking part in an online exercise designed by 173 USAID staff and implementing partners in 21 countries. The way this was possible is through harnessing the same potential for public-private partnerships used for external implementation and applying it to internal education and collaboration at USAID.

Fig. 1: MapBox visualization of GeoPoll responses.

The exercise was part of a 4-week online course in Mobile Data Solutions designed to provide a highly interactive training session for USAID mission staff and its implementing partners to share best practices, engage with prominent technologists, and get their hands on the latest tool. Rather than simply simulating mobile data tools, USAID staff ran a live exercise in DRC where they came up with 10 questions, target regions, and desired audience. The intent was to not teach a tool-centric approach, but instead begin with a tech-enabled approach to project design and implementation, with an understanding of mobile data for analysis, visualization, and sharing.

Fig. 2: Student locations for TC311 class.

This would have been a formidable exercise for any organization, but fortunately we augmented USAID’s development capacity with the abilities of three organizations. TechChange provided the online learning space, facilitation, and interactive discussions. GeoPoll ran the survey itself using their custom mobile polling tool. And MapBox provided the analysis and visualization needed to turn massive data into a simple and attractive interface. (Want to check out the data for yourself? Check out the raw data Google Spreadsheet from GeoPoll!)

But while the creation of an interactive online workshop for small-group interaction requires barriers to scale, the content is under no such restrictions. One of the videos from our previous course on Accelerating Mobile Money provided an animated history of M-PESA, the successful mobile money transfer program in Kenya, which allows everything mobile phone users to pay for everything from school fees to utility bills and is proving transformative in cases such as Haiti.

Fig. 3: M-Pesa animation used for TC311 and USAID Video of the Week

But there’s still plenty of work to do. As mobile phones continue their spread to ubiquity, the challenges for applying their potential to development will only increase, along with the continuing possibilities as the technology continues to improve. However, in the short term, we’re focused on increasing mobile access, which is the topic of our next course. If you work at USAID or with an implementing partner, we hope that you’ll consider joining us and lending your voice to this process.

THE FUTURE IS HERE! But why is it so hard to apply technology to development challenges in the field? This video with Laura Walker Hudson of Social Impact Lab explores this question in more depth, with topics including:

Getting harried aid workers thinking about new ways of doing things.
Making technology work in broader contexts, more sustainably, and aiming for quality outcomes.
Managing the transition from “pilotisis” to “scale-up fever.”
Understanding barriers to progress at an organizational level.

But don’t take our word for it. Check out the video below:

Developed in partnership with the Social Impact Lab Foundation, AES, and PROFOR, this is the second animated video that we’ve done with Laura Walker Hudson (The first was The Power of SMS and Social Change).

If you’re interested in learning more about how we approach animating, check out our blog post: TechChange Animates! How We Turn Your Ideas into Videos. We’re also adding this video to our TechChange Media Library, where you can find our other instructional videos and content.

As always, we’d love your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment below or tweet @TechChange. Thanks!

Interested in learning about Mobile Phones for Public Health? Class starts on June 3! Apply Now.

Mobile devices are quickly becoming much more than just a means to make a voice call. Top of the line devices are now being tested for their ability to be the brains for satellites. But perhaps more important than their capabilities is that they are the most rapidly disseminating technology in human history. Soon only a tiny minority will lack an always on link to the network. What’s more astounding is that this graphic is five years old and currently there are 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions, though duplicates reduce the number of users.

This ubiquity is going to have an unparalleled impact on how just about every facet of social organization operates. The next generation is growing up with an intuitive grasp of making the most of their new technical assistants, and they will incorporate them into new workflows for organizations that are unthinkable at the moment.

The complement to price decreases that are resulting in such tremendous uptake is the exponential increase in capabilities in even the simplest devices. More and more devices are benefiting from applications that enable them to collect data, profit from information services designed to be accessed via SMS or WAP, and increasingly connect directly to the internet over wireless broadband networks. The addition of GPS radios and cameras drastically improves the ability to verify information collected with these devices.

Soon regardless of where in the world you are, you’ll only be a few miles–at the most!–from the nearest node of our globally connected culture.

This guest post is by Sara Buzadzhi a past participant in TC309 Mobile Phones for Public Health. Can’t wait for June 3? Sign up for TC105 Mobiles for International Development launching on March 4th, which will feature a week on public health.

While the use of various mHealth applications and text-messaging services are
surging in both high and low-income countries, Russia has been somewhat behind
the curve in adopting these solutions to address health issues. The Russian NGO I
work for, the Health and Development Foundation, has been striving to change that,
introducing the country’s first national mHealth programs.

This January, HDF launched a new nationwide program for clients considering and
undergoing infertility treatment. This initiative, IVF/ART School uses an innovative
-combination of traditional and mHealth approaches. The target audience, women
and their families, will be reached through a multi-tiered approach including offline
seminars with reproductive health specialists at clinics; social networks, a program
site, and regular, interactive webinars online; and text messages to participants’
mobile phones. This comprehensive approach will enable us to maintain a strong
connection with our target audience, each component informing and reinforcing
program messages, and provide them with multiple chances for interaction with
peers and experts.

Why IVF?

The demographic situation in Russia has been a point of concern for the government
and the general population since birth rates began to decline in the last decade of
the 20th century. Population increases in the last several years have injected some
optimism into the discussion, but state and public organizations are still eager to
do what they can to promote population growth (including monetary incentives for
pregnant women and mothers).

Against this background, the need for easy access to assisted reproductive
technology treatment for couples dealing with infertility issues is clear. In fact, the
Russian government recently announced that infertility treatment would be covered
under the free state insurance starting in 2013.

But while financial support is important, it is also vital that women and couples
seeking treatment, or considering seeking treatment, are well informed as to their
options, and are receiving the emotional support that can greatly influence the
success of infertility treatment. That is where the IVF/ART School can play a key
role; program participants will receive expert, unbiased information and support
from several sources, including their peer group, increasing the likelihood that they
will maintain treatment until reaching a successful outcome.

Text4baby Russia

HDF’s first national mHealth program was Text4baby Russia, a nationwide maternal
and child health text messaging program that will celebrate its one-year anniversary
this February. Through this program, new and expectant mothers receive
information on caring for their health and the health of their children through free
text messages to their mobile phones. Subscribers receive 1-2 texts per week on topics like nutrition, safety, substance abuse prevention, legal rights, breastfeeding, and more.

Text4baby Russia (SMSmame in Russian) is based on the successful U.S. program
text4baby, but was significantly adapted by HDF and its government and medical
community partners to ensure that the messages meet the specific cultural and
socio-economic needs of its Russian target audience. HDF is currently piloting a
webinar series to address text message topics in greater depth, and plans to launch
the series in early 2013.

We would be happy to hear from any organizations/individuals working in similar
areas, as we have found international collaboration and knowledge sharing (in
forums like the TechChange course we attended, Mobile Phones for Public Health)
to be very helpful in developing and disseminating our work. Follow HDF and their projects on Twitter: @HealthDevtFound @Text4babyRussia @IVFSchoolRussia