SXSW 2012

Responding to medical humanitarian crises is filled with a variety of obstacles. Constraints like limited time for aid workers, uneven staff education, lousy internet and mobile phone access, as well as the frantic pace of emergency response have made aid organizations reluctant to introduce technological innovations into their practice. This panel will explore how two international aid organizations collaborated with technology companies to adapt new technologies to field conditions. In on instance, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teamed up with Google on a spatial mapping project to better understand the cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010. In another program, Women and Health Alliance (WAHA) are teaming up with the mobile phone carrier Expresso and Microsoft’s HealthVault in Senegal to adapt electronic medical record system to SMS. The discussion will address how the programs were implemented, how cultural differences were bridged, and what lessons were learned.