Mobile Phones To Monitor Child Health
The “RapidSMS” text-messaging system, to be finalized by graduate students from Columbia University, was first developed in Ethiopia to monitor food supplies and will now be used to map and track child malnutrition trends in Malawi more accurately and in real time, enabling quick responses to unfolding food and nutritional crises.
The initial phases of the Malawi project are expected to run from January to May of 2009. However, the collaborative and open-source philosophy it is based on means that anyone can take, use and adapt RapidSMS for their purposes, UNICEF stressed.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will share first prize in the United States Development Agency’s innovation competition, known as the “Development 2.0 Challenge,” for adapting basic cell phones to monitor the health of children in danger of malnutrition.
Want to find out more?
- Expert in the field: Erik Hersman, Columbia University
- Suggested source: Columbia University and UNICEF awarded top honour in USAID innovation competition
- Website: UNICEF
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