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