I talked with several people after class last night about the potential of mobile and wireless Internet technology (IT) and the implications of these for addressing health disparities. And, in thinking about that, I wanted to point you to a couple of links. One is the blog of Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs. The blog is part of the work he did for his most recent book of the same name and there's lots of interesting information there. In terms of the connection to health, there's a recent post up about how a blog saved a girl's leg in China.
I also wanted to mention the amazing work of a Boston-based non-profit called Satellife, which is doing work to address health disparities in Uganda using wireless networks. Here's a Wired article about Satellife from a couple of years ago.
Part of what connects these is the notion of "leapfrogging," a strategy in which developing countries (or poor neighborhoods), skip inferior, less efficient, more expensive or more polluting technologies and industries and move directly to more advanced ones.
2 comments:
Before this class I was not conscious of this digital revolution. I was aware of it, but not the implications and its complexity.
Hey there ddm(Matt), Mary, Kezzie! Good to see you all here. Glad you're getting something out of the course, Matt.
Mary, you raise a great point and one that often gets overlooked, in my opinion, by the most optimistic of the cyber-utopians. Of course, access to all sorts of things... like clean running water and electricity...are important for public health, and I think, precursors to the Internet (though some would dispute this). There's also the individual-level issue of access to health care, which is also important, but I think there are ways that IT may be able to 'leapfrog' around some of this, as in the story about the girl in China.
Kezzie, you also raise a great question about what sometimes gets called the 'peopleware' issue...how do people use the hardware / software once they get access. The organization that I mentioned in class that I work with on weekends, Computers for Youth (www.cyf.org) is very big on this and in addition to giving hardware and software to families, their big emphasis is on 'improving the learning environment of the home,' so they offer lots of training along with the equipment they give away.
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