Views
Mobile Applications for NGOs
From NGOPedia
| ICT Guide for Decision Makers |
Contents |
Introduction
Mobile technologies helped people or organisations to jump into information technology bandwagon especially in rural Africa where there was little or no previous infrastructure. As mobile phones and related technologies are gaining more and more popularity, innovative people are finding more ways to benefit from them. There are so many applications in this area that are worth to mention that this article wouldn’t be enough to cover. So we are going to look into a few common mobile application examples that are utilised by non-profit organisations only. For more information, case studies, applications we recommend checking a most comprehensive database on this subject, mDirectory by [MobileActive.org]. For a brief introduction to mobile technologies read Mobile and Remote Technologies.
This article is a review of a few example applications used by NGOs in these areas:
- Mobile Productivity
- Informing and education
- Data collection and surveys
- Emergency/crisis response
- Reporting/Journalism
- Navigation and Location monitoring
- Extended devices for Healthcare
Mobile Productivity
As the mobile phones get “smarter” – they start to replace/complement other productivity tools we have. Beyond just voice call they are now capable of text messages, emailing, keeping our schedules, mobile document reading/editing, taking photos and videos, internet browsing, reading e-books, even scanning documents… Some of these functions come with the phones; some are additional applications for smart phones.
In many cases, personally I started to leave my laptop behind, taking my mobile phone alone with me, since it provides me many of these functions.
But there is a rather funny consequence to this: unlike laptops and other productivity tools, mobile phones are creeping into every aspect of our lives. A recent study showed that 4 of 5 young persons go to bed with their mobile phones: we should add Teddy Bear to mobile phone functions!
Informing and Education
As more people have mobile phones (and carry them to almost everywhere) these devices are one of the best platforms to reach out people. In South Africa alone there are more than 30 million mobile phone numbers assigned.
Many NGOs and alike are using SMS functions to reach out people to send them information, follow up or send reminders. Especially healthcare institutions use SMS to send educational information about HIV/AIDS related issues, remind patients to take their medications or come to appointments, or respond their queries.
The application we will talk about here provides SMS communication functions managed from a computer:
FrontlineSMS is free open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with groups of people through mobile phones. It doesn’t require an Internet connection; it doesn’t require sophisticated phones (works with the simplest phones).
You can manage to send bulk SMSs to a group of people, you can receive and store (or process) SMS messages into your computer. Here are some examples of what a non-profit organisation can do with it:
- Create and manage all of your SMS-related contact groups
- Send and receive messages via special on-screen consoles
- Provides incoming and outgoing message history for each contact
- Engage with your contact groups – run surveys, competitions etc. via the SurveyManager
- Run your own text-based information service via the automated ReplyManager
- Export data to Excel and other programs
All you need to get started is a laptop, a cell-phone connected to the laptop – then you can download FrontlineSMS from FrontlineSMS and get going. You can also find case studies and lots of ideas from their website.
One pilot work in Uganda is worth to mention: Google Health Tips via SMS provides health tips searchable via SMS (in Uganda only). You can see the online interactive demo of the system here. Similar service is available for Farmers (Farmer's Friend) and Clinic Finder (which directs you to nearest Health Clinic.)
Data Collection and Surveys
Collecting data from the field or performing surveys especially in rural areas can create a lot of overhead and transcribing issues if you are keeping records on paper and re-entering the data on computers later. This is resource and time consuming and increases the error probabilities since it requires re-typing data.
On the other hand, lugging laptops or similar devices in the field is not easy, it is expensive and many times not safe. Then come the mobile technologies with versatile solutions to the rescue. There are many applications in this category. Most of them allow you to collect, enter data on a cell phone (with varying “smartness”) and either send it via SMS or email or directly synchronize with a central database. This way data is entered once by the person who captures it, removes the paperwork and transcription issues. It is also relatively cheaper to deploy and manage.
Some of the applications:
- EMIT from [Cell-life.org] is a mobile data collection system which allows fieldworkers to fill in forms on their cellphones from any location. This is a for fee service (i.e. they host the central system for you). Once your service is set up, you create forms to collect data, and then send the forms to the fieldworkers’ cellphones. Then they start collecting and sending data back to the database, which you can access immediately to monitor, analyse and report. You can learn more from EMIT Website.
- If you want an SMS based system, you can use [frontlinesms.com FrontLineSMS] with Survey Manager for this purpose (see section above).
- CyberTracker 3 is a free field data collection application for smartphones or handheld computers (PDA) to record any type of observation, such as weather and wildlife. It can also work with a GPS (Global Positioning System) to record the location of the observation. Data entry screens can be designed in a way that an illiterate field person can enter observations. For more information and download go to Cybertracker Website.
- Episurveyor is a free (you have to pay if you want additional levels of service, training and support – but for most uses it is free) service from DataDyne that lets you set up a worldwide mobile-phone-based data collection system in minutes. Similar to EMIT above the data is stored in DataDyne Servers – so you can set it up in minutes. For more information and set up, visit Datadyne.
Emergency/Crisis Response
As mobile devices are easy to carry and can work on batteries for longer times, they are quite useful in emergency or crisis response activities. Especially mobile phones with internet/data connections and with their cameras make an invaluable tool for these purposes. These phones can play a significant role in identifying, recording victims or unifying families for example. Depending on the situation there can be many ways to use it.
Here is a simple but interesting project to spark your thinking: Mission 4636. This 4636 short code was established right after the January 12th 2010 earth quake in Haiti to meet the urgent needs of the people through SMS messaging. Through this Mission 4636 (free) SMS service data is collected and accessed by thousands of workers and volunteers. One critical item was that most of the foreign volunteers didn’t speak the Kreyol language and needed translation. So Mission 4636 created a network of Kreyol translators worldwide, who would receive a message, send via SMS and sent back translations immediately to the teams working on the ground. Learn more about this at Mission 4636 Website or watch this inspiring video.
Reporting and Journalism
(or Citizen Journalism)
Again, especially smarter mobile phones with their internet/data connections, photo, video and sound recording capabilities make a very practical tool for this purpose. For example last year during protests in Iran people created wide Bluetooth networks (thus bypassing GSM phone network monitoring) to share photos, videos, messages with many people. Especially mobile phones in grassroots activism have proven their value as a great tool in many occasions.
One interesting service here is [www.mayomo.com MaYoMo] (Map Your Moments). It is an online free citizen journalism service with which you can send and publish your news of any kind.
Navigation and Location Monitoring
There are technologies nowadays to find your location via your mobile phone even the phone doesn’t have a GPS unit. However most of these applications work around urban areas where there are many cell phone towers. So I am not getting into those solutions.
As inner electronics are getting cheaper, many smarter phones now house GPS units in them. GPS (Global Positioning System) pin points your location on the planet by the aid of satellites around the earth. Apart from the obvious use of finding directions to where we are going, there are other uses for this technology for us NGOs in Africa.
Many fieldworkers work in rural areas traveling distances and from place to place. Tracking their move can be important for monitoring as well as safety. There are applications for mobile phones with GPS units that automatically send a message (SMS for example) to a number at given intervals that include the location of the phone. This way you can monitor fieldworker and know the location if there is a concern of safety. Likewise wildlife trekkers can use these units as a precaution. There are also non-cell-phone based (and lower cost) GPS tracking devices with similar functionality.
Glowfly is a free GPS Tracker for Windows based phones. It transmits current position to internet and others can see it in an application called MapSphere.
LiveTracker, is a free for non-commercial use service and application for Blackberry phones. It stores tracking data in a central server (free service). Then you can monitor the moves via a web browser on the internet. For more information: LiveTracker.
OpenGeo Tracker is an open source tracking system for mainly Android based cell phones.
And for IPhone, there is InstaMapper (free service).
Of course as I mentioned above there is an abundance of dedicated little, lower cost devices and services for tracking positions.
Extended devices for Healthcare
A personal interest of mine… In this category there are mobile phone devices modified or added some stuff to perform a specific function, such as a portable laboratory instrument for field health workers. I expect to see more of this kind in the near future – although most of them today are just proof-of-concepts.
Here are few examples to give you an idea: Microskia Cell-phone Holographic Microscope: This is actually a modified cell phone with camera to diagnose malaria in the field. It uses a cheap hardware modification but very sophisticated software to diagnose thick blood smear specimens. For more information: read this news article.
Heartrak ECAT Arrhythmia Monitor: is a device with chest electrodes. It connects to your cell-phone, and whenever it detects cardiac arrhythmia it sends the ECG to your doctor’s office via cell-phone automatically: visit their site.
GlucoTel is a Diabetes Management System with a glucose meter attached to your cell-phone via Bluetooth: visit BodyTel.
Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License.