Mobile Technology in Developing Countries: Three Award-winning Projects
The Vodafone Americas Foundation and the mHealth Alliance recently announced the winners of the second annual Wireless Innovation Project™ and the first mHealth Alliance Award. The winning projects were selected for their ability to leverage wireless technology to help meet challenges faced in developing countries, including access to clean air, medical care, and financial services for the rural poor.
The winning projects:
1st Place ($300,000 winner)
100 Million Stoves
Approximately 700 million households, including the poorest half of the world population rely on fire and simple stoves for cooking. Smoke and exposure from these stoves are responsible for causing premature deaths for 1.5 million women and children as well as contributing to climate change. With the potential to improve health, air quality, reduce greenhouse gases and save lives, 100 Million Stoves is a simple wireless stove use monitoring system (SUMS) that can be attached to the millions of new low-emission stoves being used in developing regions. Being developed at the University of California at Berkeley for initial application in India, this groundbreaking wireless technology will help assess the impact of household energy programs, enable feedback from users, and provide transparent verification of carbon credits.
2nd Place ($200,000 winner)
FrontlineSMS: Credit
An open source software, FrontlineSMS:Credit has the potential to open up financial services and micro-financing to millions of people in the developing world. The application leverages mobile payment systems and core banking software to bring financial services – such as savings, credit, insurance and payroll – to the entrepreneurial poor, eliminating geographic and time barriers and turning mobile payment systems into platforms for mobile banking.
3rd Place ($100,000 winner) & winner of the mHealth Alliance Award ($50,000)
Sana (previously MocaMobile)
Sana is a multidisciplinary group based out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to revolutionize healthcare delivery in rural and underserved areas. Sana has developed an innovative open source platform that allows mobile phones to capture and send data for an electronic medical record and links community health workers with physicians for real-time decision support.
Congratulations to the winning projects! Well done!
