Join our OppiaMobile beta testing team
If you’re interested in getting access to all the latest features and improvements to the OppiaMobile Android app, then join up to our beta testing team:
- Sign up to the OppiaMobile Google Group
- Then visit https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.digitalcampus.mobile.learning
Once you are signed up you’ll have the option to get the latest beta version of the OppiaMobile app directly on you Android phone.
Please bear in mind that beta versions may have small issues or bugs, so we’d really appreciate it if you post any issues either in our Google Group or directly on GitHub.
Map of OppiaMobile Users
[Update: map updated to show all users until 15 March 2014]
I just created a map of all the recent activity in OppiaMobile Android app based on the IP addresses our users are visiting from:
The map is just a point-in-time visualization of all our current users and since it’s based on IP addresses the locations aren’t exact (for example all users in Ethiopia are shown as being in Addis), but it’s sufficient to get a good impression on a country/regional level. The size of each ‘blob’ represents how many hits we’ve had from that location.
For info, here’s the process I went through to generate the map:
- Exact all the distinct IP address from our server logs
- Look up the IP address to get the city/region and country from the IPAddressLabs web service. I only signed up for their basic trial version – which doesn’t give the lat/lng – hence the requirement for the next step
- Look up the city and country using the GeoNames web service to get the lat/lng to then match up the IP address.
- Export the data and upload into CartoDB to create the visualization
Hopefully soon I’ll figure out how to make this a live map so it’s dynamically updated.
Invitation to Tender: 200 smartphones for Ethiopian Health Workers
As part of our DfID funded project in Ethiopia, we are looking to purchase 200 Android smartphones for rural health workers.
We would like to invite mobile phone suppliers to provide us with quotes for this purchasing process.
For further information, including the phone specification we’re looking for, then please contact Alex Little (alex@digital-campus.org)
OppiaMobile presentation at TelSpain
This morning I gave a presentation about OppiaMobile to the TelSpain conference in Madrid. At the conference I meet several colleagues from projects and work I was doing at the Open Uni over 5 or 6 years ago, so was great to meet them again. My presentation was video recorded, so will post up a link to the full video once it is available.
Introducing Marijs, our new colleague
We are very pleased to welcome Marijs Carrin to the Digital Campus team. Marijs is responsible for our content development for primary health care, specifically focused on our current DFID project in Ethiopia. You can read Marijs’s full bio on our team page.
New Research Paper on Mobile Technologies for Health Workers
We have just had a research paper accepted and published on “Meeting community health worker needs for maternal health care service delivery using appropriate mobile technologies in Ethiopia”. The paper describes our approach and the technologies used in our recent project working with health extension workers in Ethiopia using mobile technologies for recording and managing maternal care visits. We anticipate that the results and approach outlined in this paper would be of great interest to others working in the field of mobile health.
The full open-access article can be found on the PlosOne website, and here is the abstract:
Background
Mobile health applications are complex interventions that essentially require changes to the behavior of health care professionals who will use them and changes to systems or processes in delivery of care. Our aim has been to meet the technical needs of Health Extension Workers (HEWs) and midwives for maternal health using appropriate mobile technologies tools.
Methods
We have developed and evaluated a set of appropriate smartphone health applications using open source components, including a local language adapted data collection tool, health worker and manager user-friendly dashboard analytics and maternal-newborn protocols. This is an eighteen month follow-up of an ongoing observational research study in the northern of Ethiopia involving two districts, twenty HEWs, and twelve midwives.
Results
Most health workers rapidly learned how to use and became comfortable with the touch screen devices so only limited technical support was needed. Unrestricted use of smartphones generated a strong sense of ownership and empowerment among the health workers. Ownership of the phones was a strong motivator for the health workers, who recognised the value and usefulness of the devices, so took care to look after them. A low level of smartphones breakage (8.3%,3 from 36) and loss (2.7%) were reported. Each health worker made an average of 160 mins of voice calls and downloaded 27Mb of data per month, however, we found very low usage of short message service (less than 3 per month).
Conclusions
Although it is too early to show a direct link between mobile technologies and health outcomes, mobile technologies allow health managers to more quickly and reliably have access to data which can help identify where there issues in the service delivery. Achieving a strong sense of ownership and empowerment among health workers is a prerequisite for a successful introduction of any mobile health program.