SATELLIFE, a 12 year old international health care information NGO located in Watertown, MA, USA, has been working for the past year to test the viability of handheld computers in the health sector in East Africa. Our project, which is more fully described at http://pda.healthnet.org, has used the palm os operating system units to both collect survey data and to disseminate information to medical students and practicing physicians. At the halfway point in the project, we are convinced that the handheld computer can be a very valuable tool, particularly in environments where information resources are difficult to come by. In East Africa, computers are not generally available outside of major institutions. Where they are accessible, they are often shared by as many as 30 users. Electricity outside of urban areas is undependable where it is available. The handheld computers in our project were selected based on price -- we were looking for a unit that could reasonably be expected to have a price in the future that would be affordable to physicians and health workers in Africa. They also had to have replaceable batteries - at least for the units used primarily for data collection. There were no electric outlets in Muchakos, Kenya for a quick recharge during a three-day survey project.
We are now working with Skyscape.com to provide physicians and medical students with medical text and reference material that they would otherwise not be able to have. Each project participant has been provided with two textbooks through a donation from Skyscape (http://www.Skyscape.com).
Going forward -- we expect to be quickly expanding the use of handhelds over the next few months in East Africa. Working with Palm Computing, we will begin making the units available for health and medical projects in the region, where they will be used for a variety of projects including screening blood donors in an effort to protect the safety of the blood supply, tracking the distribution of essential drugs, collecting information on HIV/AIDS interventions, and providing physicians and other health workers with critical treatment guidelines - particularly in the use of anti-retroviral therapies.
If you have a relevant application that you would be willing to make available for free to health workers in these challenging environments, we would love to hear about it. (Doctors in East Africa earn between $300 -$1300 US per month).
Holly Ladd
Executive Director
SATELLIFE
