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Introduction

This project tries to help health workers (HW) in developing countries by using smart phones, in-country servers, and a wired+wireless networks.

This wiki web site is a place to discuss and describe the functionality and implementation of:

The software running the smart phones. In our case running the Android operating system. The phones will be used for:

education / documentation. HWs will be able to consult documentation and watch educational videos stored inside the phone. In developing countries not all HWs have access to documentation or universities, so we bring the information to them.
patient data gathering. HWs will use interactive forms for entering patient data including geolocation, and possibly images and bar code readings. This data will later be used to better understand the way diseases spread, to track change in affected areas, and to improve the system itself.
communications between HWs and other HWs, or between HWs and experts located in hospitals or universities. The idea behind this is like a mobile forum, and it does not cost extra money like SMS does, because of the included data plan with the mobile provider.

The software running on server side. This sofware will be accessed in at least two ways.

As a control panel. In this case, selected users (for example main investigators and project leaders) will access the web application running on the server using a standard web browser. These users will be able to view the data entered in the phones on top of an interactive map, and will be able to manipulate and analyze this information. They will also be able to configure some functions of the phones. In this case, the system will transmit the desired changes to all phones, which will update automatically to reflect the new configuration (for example the list of allowed numbers to be dialled).
The server side sofware will also be accessed by the smart phones, both for receiving and sending data. Since the connection from the phones can be unstable (depending on the network conditions), the phones will rarely communicate with the server on demand (by a direct action of the user). Normally it will happen in the background, when the phone notices a connection is available. Example cases when phone and server need to communicate are when the phone wants to store patient data in the server, and when the phone needs new media from the server, for example new educational video courses.