Notes from “Bridging the Digital Divide: Smart Tools for Addressing Health Pandemics in Emerging Economies”
A conference at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, April 7-8, 2006
### Michael Free, PATH
* Prevention -> Detection -> Treatment
* Focuses on Prevention
* Vaccines are slow to grow -> Thermostable vaccines
* Vaccines are limited -> New ways of delivering vaccines that are more efficient
* Detection slow -> Point-of-care tests
* Today, action often depends on the threat a disease poses to the developed world…
### Aimee Gauthier, ITDP (transport policy for africa for health group)
* Transport is a bottleneck of health care
* Focus on HIV/AIDS but better transport is common solution to many diseases
* Repair/Maintenance toughest/$$ part of supplying cars
* Bicycles appropriate up to distances of ~20k
* “California Bike Coalition” bikes are used
* Plus non-motorized ambulances (e.g. bike trailers)
* “DOTS” program–people visit patients to make sure they’re taking their meds
* Hospital ~50k away from average patient
* Regional post ~23k
* Pharmacy ~5k
* Bicycles could bridge gaps between these levels
### Prabhu Kandachar, Design Engineering, Delft University
* “Distant diagnostics” – Delft student project, patients can transmit their sugar level 400mi to hospital for advice
* “Infoproduct for pregnant women” – for illiterate women to self-diagnose and medicate
* “Oral cancer screener” – portable laser screener for mouth/throat cancer (caused by lots of tobacco chewing in starvation-prone areas)
* “Tele-diagnosis system” – Udupi district, south India; patient meets with local nurse, who takes pictures of wounds and sends to specialists: “teledermatology”.
* needs standard documentation format
* specialists got annoyed because they no longer had direct patient contact; tough to stay motivated
### Joanne Dunaway (UC Berkeley)
* “Pandemic” doesn’t mean “infectious” or “contagious”–just “widespread”
* 2.7% of global illness is due to indoor smoke from fires -> 1.6M deaths per year
* Smoke-free or smoke-limiting cooking stoves to address this problem