Introduction to mHealth and Open Source Volunteering

1. Introduction to mHealth and Open Source Volunteering Neetu Jain Systems Software Engineer, Hewlett-Packard Plano, TX neetu.jain@hp.com,nuts14jain@yahoo.com

2. What to expect in this talk mHealth Definition mHealth importance mHealthin developed countries mHealth in developing countries mHealth challenges mHealth +FOSS Why FOSS is important here? How to get involved? Walimu Q&A

3. What is mHealth? mHealth or mobile health is defined as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices.

4. mHealth:Unlimited opportunities mHealth has a huge potential to improve the cost, quality and convenience of healthcare in coming years all around the world.

5. mHealth: Categories .

6. mHealth: Developed countries Focus is on ageing population, fitness, chronic diseases Often uses higher end technology and is mostly for high-income consumers Aimed to solve first world problems 

7. mHealth:Developing Countries

8. mHealth:Developing Countries • Goal is to solve third world problems • Bring healthcare to underserviced areas • Better information distribution to solve problems like malaria, polio, pre-natal care, epidemics-management • Often uses basic mobile functions like calls, SMS and is geared for lower-income, illiterate families

9. mHealth:Success stories

10. mHealth: Challenges .Financial Business model Funding Sustainability Cultural Language Attitude Gender roles Capacity Technical capacity(support and development) Human capacity (training) Infrastructure Other Regulations Privacy

11. mHealth-FOSS = Plant in a pot Let it grow and reach its potential!

12. Free and open source software User can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. *free as in freedom

13. FOSS: Why it fits perfectly 1)low cost While maintenance and training costs are still associated with FOSS, the total cost of ownership is low 2)localization FOSS can help in creating tailored-fit software for developing countries 3) Evolving capacity After all open source is a community effort, hence it evolves faster ex :- openOffice, mozilla

14. mHealth+FOSS+you=Humanitech This is where we all can get involved and contribute to the growth of humanitarian technologies and experience the era of social innovation (the next big revolution)

15. mHealth:Get involved Anybody who is interested can and should get involved not matter what field you are in, Because you get to :- 1) Gain experience 2) Do good 3) Appreciate issues more closely neetu.jain@hp.com,nuts14jain@yahoo.com

16. mHealth: Projects of my interest Walimu: clinical decision support system is designed to assist clinicians in making decisions about patient care. Raxa: free healthcare information system and an open-source electronic medical record (EMR) for mostly poor, sometimes illiterate, patients and their overworked providers.

17. Resources • mHealth Alliance: www.mhealthalliance.org/get-involved • Walimu: http://www.walimu.org/ • Raxa: http://www.raxa.org/ • Engineers without borders: http://www.ewb-usa.org/projects/locate-project/project_334 • Harvard Developers for Development: http://harvardd4d.wix.com/home • https://github.com/, http://sourceforge.net/ • http://sourceforge.net/

18. Q&A

19. Thank You!