Health meetings/21 February 2008

  This page is part of the OLPC Health Project. Hardware | Software | Content | Health Jam

Attended

• Mika Matsuzaki
• Arjun Sarwal
• SJ Klein
• Anna Breshtyn
• Lia Meisinger
• Benjamin Schwartz
• Josh Hehner (over IRC)

Minutes

_sj_> anna : I've been working with the hesperian foundation
<_sj_> it's being reformatted, and will ship as it is o nthe xo; some people including mea are rallying around the diea
<_sj_> of tweaking it so it's more interactive / geared towards children
<_sj_> my tack is we should be more specific about the mateiral we're requesting to see if there's stuff that's arleady child appropriate
<_sj_> and constructionist and interactive.  so I've tried to outline just what our reqiurements are.
<_sj_> asked for feedback at our next call; now want to make a beautiful flyer and meet with community artists to send out 
<_sj_> to get materials that are reight on the dot.
<_sj_> connected with leah through mark, a colleague; she's a physician, working on surgery issues specifically re childbirth.  not a topic I listed originally,
<_sj_> but there are so many things it would be so helpful to have in the 3d world, informatinaollly around the topic, things kids in the 3w face on a regular basis.
<_sj_> she's interested in doing an mph projet and contributing towards olpc it seems a fit for her ot cerate a module for us dealing with health of young children, childbirth, health of mothers, &c.
<_sj_> lea : things around childbirth, whether it's just distinguishing when they need to go get help
<_sj_> can make a big difference. theeres a great application here for working on some of that 
<_sj_> if you guys agree... it certainly seems like it could help a lot.
<_sj_> there's a lot of information that could be prsented that would be relatively approp, or at least not inapp , for shildren using the laptop.
<_sj_> especially in the dw
<_sj_> the kids are exposed to a lot of this in a very first-hand way
<_sj_> [In attendance : arjun s, mika m, anna b, lea, ben schwartz, sj]
<_sj_> ben s : we shouldn't worry about making things 'appropriate' - countries will choose what they want to use or not 
<_sj_> lea - so we want to make things genreally acceptable across the board
<_sj_> some things it isn't legal to teach in some countries
<_sj_> make things in sections so just those could be left out
<_sj_> ben : that would be [fine]
<_sj_> arjs : workflow to adopt t ostart off somewhere?
<arjs> talking about licensing issues when one makes a game or appication 
<arjs> off some material
<_sj_> one thing I really strongly believe in tfor shipping with the laptop is:
<_sj_> health is a unique topic compared to other educational topics that come with the laptop and shoudl e put at the forefront of things the laptop comes with
<_sj_> it wouldn't be enough to just be able to look things up 
<_sj_> b/c it's something kids face on a d2d basis
<_sj_> if they immediately can access the things important to them, that would be really valuable.  I don't know hwo that cna happen and still do justice to all the other features of the laptop.
<_sj_> [aside; anna has notes from a few mins when I was talking about how to have a reference library for ourselves while building free content for thers]
<_sj_> ben s : lte's work on noninteractive information first, to mkae people avaialble and get people working togethe and thinking about what exists and what needs to be made/found
<_sj_> before moving on to new interactive and game like and child-friendly materials
<_sj_> I see no problem with fully integratin ghealth int oall other bundled content. 
<_sj_> I dont' think yo ucan communicate much medical knwoeldge without text unless you want to conver everything into speech... 
<jhehner> comment from the peanut gallery: health needs to be a group of activities in addition to having health content
<_sj_> arjs : 3 things . 1, do we really wnat to project health info as seomthing critical?  do we want to provide that sort of life-savin information (and promote it as such)?
<_sj_> 2, we should have a health section for the library
<_sj_> 3, getting healht information across to the illiterate, thorugh pictures, text-to-speech, &c is very interesting.
<_sj_> [thx josh]
<_sj_> @josh: what sorts of activities do you have in mind?  
<_sj_> ben s : that sounds reasonable.  even in middle school we had some nice dissections
<_sj_>  there's a lot of medical biologicla content we could do 
<jhehner> comment from the peanut gallery: an example is public access defibrillators which start talking to you the moment you turn them on, and will literally teach you what to do with the device if you don't know what to do
<_sj_> sj : notes there is great frog-dissection program online
<_sj_> josh: scary
<_sj_> [josh:scary]*
<jhehner> (i'm not saying we do that.. its an example of an interactive device...
<_sj_> lea : you have to assume this will be used in all different ways, and for some pepole will be their only rsouce.
<jhehner> some PADs teach CPR, AR, etc... not just how to put the defib pads on
<_sj_> there can be information, not specially placd, but as long as people can access it veyr quickly, that could make a big differece to people.
<_sj_> interactive is a realm for kids to learn basic things;just having basic information available so they can learn by reading it, whether an emergency or not, out of an interest in medicine : either way, having it there as a resource for them could be very valuable.
<arjs> critical life saving information should be there on the XO
<arjs> but not necessarily the XO can be projected as a tool for that
<jhehner> comment from the peanut gallery: another thing the health group can be doing is pushing for the evolution of other XO activities in directions that will make them useful for health applications.. an example would be better teleconferencing, where you can pop up text, graphics, etc.. in parallel, maybe an API so that telemetry could be sent through
<_sj_> sj notes : we should avoid being a first publisher for material that impinges on life-threatening processes
<_sj_> [at some length]
<_sj_> lea : for issues such as cutting umbilical cords... and tetanus dangers... this seems like something that is useful prevention, not life threatening, but potentially saving.
<jhehner> _sj_: that's very unlikely to happen... no need to reinvent the wheel with any of the content, its all out there... hesperian books have lots on emergencies, for example
<_sj_> ben: it sounds as though you are talking of a component of a childbirth manual.  how to deliver a child safely, including proper severing of the umbilical cord.
<_sj_> jhehner, right.
<_sj_> lea : I'm just trying to clarify - if there are sources that teach these basic things and are out there, using as they are available is okay?
<jhehner> _sj_: hesperian books are also very good at repeatedly telling folks that they need to get more help for lots of the stuff they might be dealing with _if possible_... they make a good balance of providing help and info for folks dealing with situations where there really is no doctor, for example, while also being reference info for when there is one available
<jhehner> fine balance
<_sj_> josh, right
<_sj_> [noted on the call]
<_sj_> mika: are we making the distinction of things for families rather than for kids? 
<_sj_> some of this information may not be helpful for kids.
<_sj_> anna : one way I got involve was a specific case in thailand where they ended up working with a community where 
<_sj_> the children... the state had built wells to provide clean water 
<jhehner> if you look at the educational content, you can see that it is not stand alone info., but rather meant to populate a set of activities, or even larger than that, a whole process or educational infrastructure... in the health examples in my hypothetical case scenario, you'll see that health content plays the same role
<_sj_> and the children spearheaded the effort to rebiuld the wells where tehgroundwater would be better
<_sj_> they were really impressed and wanted to reach out to those kids who just needed access to information
<jhehner> it is used as part of a larger community health initiative process
<_sj_> [jhehner, right.  actually, if youcould write mor about that on the project pages...]
<_sj_> ben: i also think it's important that ... we have to do this odd thing to target anyone from 6 to 18.
<jhehner> _sj_: let me know if this is disruptive... don't mean to be confusing either this transcript or your phone convo
<_sj_> arjs : olpc has never been only about things for kids 6-16.
<jhehner> arjs: OLPC also repeated stresses that we underestimate what kids could do, and that therefor notions of 'age-appropriate' are different in this context
<arjs> jhehner, yes. absolutely true.
<jhehner> in any case, one might argue that childhood itself is not, beyond about age 5, actually about real developmental stages, but rather a process of extendd privilege... this privilege does not exist in most third-world setting...
<jhehner> hence kids working at age 8, taking care of kids at age 8, etc...
<jhehner> or the kids that anyone in development work has met that seem 'old beyond their years'
<jhehner> because of the crazy shit they have had to deal with...
<jhehner> _sj_: will do
<arjs> health content email id needed
<_sj_> we're talking about how to use rt, &c.
<jhehner> arjs: what's up with the health e-mail list?
<jhehner> or _sj_
<jhehner> just out of curiosity
<arjs> jhehner, request has been put to the new sysadmin at olpc
<arjs> jhehner, just giving him time to settle down :)
<jhehner> arjs: no worries
<_sj_> talking about health content submissions
<arjs> next steps
<arjs> 1. rt queue and ppl getting involved
<arjs> 2. reachout for content
<_sj_> ben notes that we should have standing contacts with orgs that, say, distribut ematerials to the third world
<_sj_> (sj agrees)
<_sj_> ben wants 'someone official' to contact these groups to make the connection
<_sj_> (sj and arjs think this is a dangerous mindset that must be rooted out imnmediately :)
<arjs> _sj_, please do it!
<_sj_> lea notes that seh wants to ask for materials from the peace corps,but doesn't want to piss off any higher ups by asking individual peace corps members for help
<jhehner> the auto show for which i've been the one-man paramedic all day is finally over for the night, so i'm heading home.. g'night folks
* jhehner has quit ()