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