Health
Health | Literacy | Math | Music | Biology | Chemistry -
Introduction
Welcome to the OLPC Health Portal. To understand what we're doing and why we're here please read our Vision Statement.
We are an interdisciplinary group working on medical-related projects associated with the XO, including software, hardware, and content. Health projects can be a local grassroots undertaking, a student group project, a pilot implementation, a global community creation-sprint weekend - we cut across geographic, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries to help all health-related OLPC work move forward.
We hope you'll join us.
Community
We're always interested in hearing from, talking with, and collaborating with others with similar interests. No particular experience is required - just a passion for OLPC and the medical field and a willingness to learn. We're all constantly learning from and teaching each other.
If you are interested in what we are doing, most of our discussions take place on the Library mailing list, and the best way to join the conversation is to join the list and introduce yourself. You may also add yourself to the /People list if you want to help out.
For chat via IRC you can find us at #olpc-health on freenode. (what is IRC?)
You can find our meeting agendas and minutes here: Health meetings
Health Projects
The Health projects take three major forms; Content, Software and Hardware along with some other organizational and meta-projects.
Health Content
We are working to create a comprehensive set of health modules that are localized to each of the target countries. Over the next several months we will be working to find partners to donate content appropriate for the laptop. We will use that content as a starting point, localizing and extending it to meet the needs of the children in the target countries. For more information on our primary project, see the Health Content.
Health Software
We are working software projects geared specifically towards Health on the XO, and are adapting existing applications as well. For example Measure is one example of an existing Activity being adapted for Health use. By plugging in sensors like an EKG to the XO's audio-in port, vital signs can be measured via software.
Health Hardware
There are currently several groups working on Health sensors for the XO. Some are a simple as a temperature gauge that can be plugged into the audio-in port and used with Measure. But the eventual goal of Health Hardware is a $10USD USB device that can act as a full TeleHealth remote sensor package for pulse, temperature, blood oximeter, and many other simple sensors. Along with existing components such as the built in webcam on the XO this will allow doctors to diagnose patients from hundreds of miles away.
Other Health Projects
There are other projects that are needed to implement any sort of Healthcare with the XO. There are ongoing efforts to help translate our content, as well as our software. Recruiting new healthcare workers, programmers and other tasks is always important and could use your help. Once our materials are finished, we will of course need people for training people how to use our tools. And of course this and need organizing and updating. We can always use volunteers for this.
Related non-OLPC projects
There are similar projects that we are collaborating with, including:
- Debian-Med - a "Custom Debian Distribution" with the aim to develop Debian into an operating system that is particularly well fit for the requirements for medical practice and research. The goal of Debian-Med is a complete system for all tasks in medical care which is built completely on free software.
Getting Involved
If you are interested in helping, you can help! We need people from all disciplines health-related or not, trained or not. If you don't find a place in any of the projects on this page you can always contact Arjun or any of the people on the Health/People list.
If you think you fit any of the following categories, please visit the page and see how you can help:
Health Organizations
The Health Projects of OLPC are still in their infancy. Some working relationships have been started with Health Organizations. The Hesperian Foundation[1] is the first such group to contribute to OLPC Health. But other groups have expressed interest and talks are underway.
The members of the Health Project need to be diligent in searching for other organizations and making contact with them. If you would like to add to our list of candidates, or help write proposals to these groups, please visit the Health Organizations page.
A note about OLPC and Health projects
OLPC is committed in its efforts to providing children in developing countries with a low cost, connected laptop. The laptop is a tool for learning, sharing and expression; however, the presence of a low-cost, rugged and connected device such as the XO laptop goes on to benefit the communities (kids and their families) in more ways than just one. One of these aspects is improving health and living practices of people.
There has been a lot of interest from volunteers and organizations to develop applications and tools around the XO laptop that would help the recipients of the laptop and their families adopt healthy living practices. These initiatives have largely centered around development of software and content which serves to act as a source of reference for symptoms, diseases and preventive practices and healthy living. There have also been certain efforts in the development of tele-health peripheral modules.
While OLPC is not currently in a position where it could fund these projects, it can endorse the efforts and partner in grant applications. Also, OLPC will do its best in providing communication channels (mailing lists, conference calls, project hosting etc.) that facilitate these projects. --Arjs 11:27, 1 February 2008 (EST)
Group of advisors
(alphabetic order)
- Amit Gognaa
- Benjamin Mako Hill
- Carla Gomez Monroy
- Erica Frank
- Gustavo Rojas Medina
- Ichiro Kawachi
- Jim Hopper
- Josh Hehner
- Scott Swanson
- SJ Klein
- S V Subramanian
- Walter Bender
Role of Advisors :
The advisors bring their experience, knowledge, expertise and professional networks to the OLPC-Health project. They would help to propel the project forward by giving perspectives, advising project groups and connecting volunteers/participants with organizations and people who might be able to contribute in a positive way. The interaction between advisors and the Health project volunteer/participants would be through monthly conference calls and advising requests on the wiki. There are no specific time commitments expected from the advisors, but we expect them to be committed to the cause and to participate as much as possible.
Mechanism of advising through a wiki portal
Considering the time constraints of the advisors, different people emailing advisors separately wouldn't be easy on the advisors. So the current idea is the following -- there would be a wiki page where various groups would list themselves, their projects and describe their work. They would along there, put up things that they need help with and/or specific advisory requests -- for example "we need to talk to some paramedic regarding our plan"; or more specifically; I'd like to talk with person X regarding this plan.
The advisors , as and when their time allows, would periodically go through that page and look through the requests. They could choose to help one or more groups at different points of time by either writing down on the page itself the solution to a specific problem if they feel that it might be beneficial in general to more than one group or may be applicable for a later point of time too. The advisors could also choose to contact the group offline and discuss out the issues.
Such and related issues and corresponding progress would be discussed in monthly conference calls with advisors, although the frequency of conference calls amongst the group working on projects would be much higher.