The Daily Maverick: FrontlineSMS: Mass communication where the Internet ends
Called FrontlineSMS all the system needs to operate as an effective communicator is a computer, a mobile phone and the text message-based software. The boon of this system is that it works where the Internet cannot reach and is a major benefit to marginalised NGOs and other rural organisations. “At St Gabriel the software is used to coordinate community healthcare workers running over a huge area to check if people are going to be available, when they are due to take their medication, and to mobilise communities when the mobile clinic is on its way,” says Ken Banks of Kiwanja who invented FrontlineSMS.
Hailing from the UK’s Channel Islands, Banks was firmly entrenched in a financial and technology career, which by his own admission was rather boring, when in 1993 he joined a developmental mission to build a school in Zambia. The experience was life changing and a couple of years later he was back in Africa, this time in Uganda to build a hospital. By the time he returned to the UK, he had decided to study social anthropology and to find a way to use his tech skills to benefit the developmental sector.
Read more on the Daily Maverick Website.
TechCrunch: Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief
A group of companies, including Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, CrowdFlower and Samasource, collaborated to set up a text message hotline – “Mission 4636” – supported by the U.S. Department of State. The Haitian government collaborated with radio stations to advertise the hotline, and a few days after the disaster, anyone in Port-au-Prince could send an SMS to a toll-free number, 4636, to request help. The messages were routed to relief crews at the U.S. Coast Guard and the International Red Cross on the ground.
Read more on the TechCrunch Website.
Guardian: Fast mobile-based messaging service boosts healthcare and cuts costs
After the free SMS software FrontlineSMS:Medic was used to track outbreaks of tuberculosis, the local hospital saved $3,500 in costs (mostly in fuel) and some 2,100 hours in travel and work time across six months, while at the same time the number of tuberculosis patients treated was doubled. The cost to the hospital of using the SMS messaging tool to gather health data was just $250 over the same period in text-messaging charges.
“The community health workers were able to get the information to the right people about symptoms much faster,” says Josh Nesbit, executive director of FrontlineSMS:Medic. “Now all patient follow-up is based on SMS messages, which means that less patients are dropping out of their drug programmes because they forget or don’t know where to get the drugs.”
Nesbit is developing other uses for mobile phones and SMS software, including a monitoring system that is using artificial intelligence software to auto-categorise messages sent from healthcare workers in the field. The idea is to catch symptoms across a number of languages and spellings (or misspellings) to detect outbreaks of diseases or hotspots for HIV/Aids, for example.
Read more on the Guardian website.
Guardian: Mobile Technology Takes Centre Stage in Disaster Relief
“The good news about mobile penetration is how you can interact with people at scale to serve a social good and be in touch with people’s needs,” says Josh Nesbit, executive director of FrontlineSMS:Medic, a software tool that was rolled out to health care workers in Malawi 18 months ago and is now being used across 11 counties, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. The service is a sister product of FrontlineSMS which helped prioritise SMS messages following the Haitian earthquake.
Read more on the Guardian website.
FrontlineSMS at Google Zeitgeist
“The power to make a positive difference in society lies in all our hands – businesses, governments and individuals. How have advances in technology and social media altered the balance of power between the state and individuals in driving change? What can business and government leaders learn from inspiring individuals who persevere against all odds to bring about lasting improvement?”
These were just a few questions being asked at Google Zeitgeist 2010, an invitation-only event held earlier this month in a country retreat outside London. The Panel consisted of:
Howard Schultz (Chairman, President & CEO, Starbucks)
Ken Banks (Founder, kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS)
Minouche Shafik (Permanent Secretary, UK Department for International Development)
Jessica Jackley (Co-Founder, Kiva)
The session was moderated by Chrystia Freeland, the Global Editor-at-Large for Reuters.
FrontlineSMS at Google Zeitgeist
Ken Banks, Mobile Technology Innovator
“Some of the smallest, most under-resourced nonprofit organizations can make the biggest difference. This technology gives them a tool that works, despite all their limitations.”
Ken Banks has never monitored elections in Africa, run a rural healthcare network in India, stocked pharmacies with malaria medication, or brought crucial pricing information to farmers in El Salvador. Yet the computer software program he created does all that and more.
While involved in conservation work in Africa, Banks saw a huge unmet need for technology that could send information between groups in remote areas with no Internet access. Such a tool could save hours of time and transform effectiveness for resource-stretched groups.
Banks returned from the field with this knowledge: Grassroots nonprofit organizations lack money, technical savvy, expensive hardware, reliable electricity, and Internet access. What do they have? Cell phones that can be used virtually anywhere.
Understanding these realities, Banks created FrontlineSMS. “I wrote the software in five weeks at a kitchen table,” he says. “I made it a generic communications platform that could be used for almost anything, and I made it free.”
Deploying FrontlineSMS requires simply a laptop computer and a cell phone (even a fairly old or recycled one), and a cable. “After downloading the free software online, you never need the Internet again,” he explains. “Attach a mobile phone to the computer with a cable, type your message on the computer keyboard, select the people you want to send it to from a contact list the software lets you create, and hit ‘send.’ Since it can run off of an inexpensive laptop, it works for any organization that wants to use text messaging, even in remote locations with unreliable electricity.”
Today FrontlineSMS delivers vital information in more than 50 nations. Activists in countries with dictatorial regimes are now able to set up two-way messaging without openly going through local operators. One week after the software hit the Web, Zimbabwean groups used it to inform citizens in disconnected rural areas about political upheaval. It was similarly effective during the state of emergency in Pakistan. Nigerians used it to monitor their own 2007 election, with 10,000 texts sent about what went wrong, and right, at the polls.
A doctor in the Philippines can now communicate in advance with rural villages to determine what critical medical supplies to bring on his visits. Citizens throughout East Africa report shortages of essential medicines, forcing action by governments who had denied there were problems. The efficiency of a rural healthcare network serving 250,000 people in Malawi was revolutionized when a college student arrived with a hundred recycled phones and a laptop loaded with the software—saving a thousand hours of doctor time, thousands of dollars in fuel costs, and doubling the number of tuberculosis patients cared for within six months.
Read more on the National Geographic Website
FrontlineSMS Scales Service With Omidyar Network Grant
Millions Receive New Ability to Access Information
Omidyar Network today announced a $350,000 grant to FrontlineSMS, a U.K. based non-profit that provides free software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a simple, low-cost means of two-way, group communication. Omidyar Network’s two-year grant will enable FrontlineSMS to reach millions more individuals and foster new services to provide information critical to their health, livelihood and ability to hold their governments accountable.
“The innovative use of the enabling technology and its application in furthering access to information and government transparency on a global scale make FrontlineSMS a natural partner for Omidyar Network,” said Stephen King, senior director, investments at Omidyar Network. “FrontlineSMS and its worldwide developer community provide an accessible technology that can enrich lives around the globe.”
Read More on the PR Newswire Website
BBC: Web tool oversees Afghan election
Mr Conley hopes “hundreds of thousands of people” will use the system, which has been promoted by distributing “thousands of leaflets” and radio reports…. In addition, he said, each text message is relatively expensive, costing the equivalent of two minutes of talk time.
“Even though that is the same amount of money it costs to buy bread for your family people have told me that some will be willing not to eat that evening [in order to be able] to tell the international community what is going on in the country.”
Read more on the BBC News website.
Aidsmap.com: using mobile phones in HIV care and prevention
In a period of six months the SMS network saved the hospital an estimated 1200 hours of staff follow-up time and over $3000 in motorbike fuel. Close to 1400 patient updates have been processed through SMS. Over 100 patients have started TB treatment when their symptoms noticed by CHWs were reported by text message. The network has brought the Home-Based Care unit to the homes of 130 patients who might otherwise not have received care. Additionally texting has saved ART monitors 900 hours of travel time and eliminated the need to hand-deliver paper reports.
Read more on the aidsmap.com website [pdf].
Public Radio International: Data collection via mobile phone
Ken Banks is the man behind one of the most interesting and useful mobile phone tools I’ve ever written about: FrontlineSMS. Ken jokingly and lovingly calls it “software with an attention deficit disorder.” He’s not helping, because he just keeps adding new features. The latest one is something called FrontlineForms. If FrontlineSMS turns a mobile phone network into a mass messaging system, then FrontlineForms is designed to turn that same network into a mass data collection and storage system.
