Message to MoMo Kampala Members

Message to MoMo Kampala Members

Dear MoMoers,

What probably should have been a series of blogs may now become a missive, so please bear with me while I do my best to bring up to date those of you who have not participated at our several recent events.

To my mind MoMo should be a home grown movement of people and ideas, born of the faith, vision and courage of those who strive to improve the quality of lives, work and study by self improvement and helping one another, through the development and implementation of mobile applications, using the regular meetings held at a local Mobile Monday chapter as a means of keeping the home fires burning. And perhaps that is why we have been concentrating more on the convening of smaller special interest group (SIG) meetings, for the time being. As it happened, our meetings focused on mobile health or mHealth, rather than the larger monthly meetings that many of you had become accustomed to – and that some complained that they had missed. You will be glad to know that we plan to hold another general meeting the week after next, but more on that shortly.

Our last general meeting held at UNICEF, with the theme, mHealth for Mother and Child was one of the most interactive we had had. John Nagenda’s masterful chairmanship, aided by Minister for Primary Health Care, the Hon James Kakooza, created a stimulating debate between health professionals, developers, aid agency and NGO officials and business representatives. Energy levels were so high that many could hardly bring themselves to break off their private discussions to join the delicious buffet served up by UNICEF.

It was during that Mother and Child Health session that Dr Ashis Brahma announced the formation of the mHealth Uganda SIG, calling for those interested to sign up. The relatively smaller monthly mHealth SIG meetings allowed for greater intimacy, and if I may say, forthrightness; let the political correctness chips fall where they would. With the to and fro of constructive criticism refining our discussions, sometimes heated, but always productive, consensus was being built at a rate of knots! The idea that the mHealth SIG might itself spawn a project had been kicked around, when one of the medical doctors in our group, who works for the health ministry and who spent most of his time up country, took the floor and reminded us city folk that CHWs (Community Health Workers), including VHTs (Village Health Teams), who were on the front line in reaching out patients at the village level, did not have much cash to pay for airtime. When he pointed out that some, attending an expectant mother whose pregnancy showed signs of being abnormal, might hesitate to use their precious airtime to consult with another more experienced colleague. This was a sobering thought. That reality check gave birth to a proposed project to provide mobile services to expectant mothers and CHWs. Those leading that project shall be able to tell you more about it at a future MoMoKla meeting, but suffice it to say for now that one of the telecoms companies has come forward to offer a toll free voice service to beneficiaries of such a scheme. As a side note, in the interim members of the mHealth team, Sean Blaschke, Dr Simon Kibuuka, Terra Weikel, Laiton Namutebi and Maureen Agena, presented mHealth apps demos to delegates attending the AU Summit’s Youth Forum.

Our last mHealth meeting, held at Orange on 9th August, and attended by 53 delegates, was chaired by MoH Commissioner for ICT, Dr Eddie Mukooyo, ably accompaniedby Dr Issa Makumbi, Commissioner for Epidemiology, sitting on the front row, whose regular vociferous interventions on behalf of prospective beneficiaries of the mHealth apps gave impetus to both speakers and delegates. Efforts by one or another delegate to clearly enunciate his or her views were encouraged by the switched-on commissioners and by Dr Rose Ademun, chief epidemiologist for the Ministry of Agruculture. Presentations started with Diana Rodriguez Wong and Jaclyn Carlsen, visiting from Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Millennium Village Project (MVP) and New Media Task Force, telling us how ChildCount targets children under five and pregnant mothers, with CHWs using mobile phones to gather nutrition and malaria information from patients, RapidSMS, allowing more effective monitoring of the efficacy of their interventions. Musa Mwanje and Geofrey Lutwama showed how their Saving Tomorrow mHealth app could effectively and inexpensively provide expectant mothers with reminders about nutritional anti-natal or immunization appointment information through to a child’s fifth birthday. Dr Glayds and Lawrence Zikusoka presented on the Anthrax outbreak and how CTPH are using mHealth apps to help contain the anthrax outbreak at QENP through sensitizing and teaching local villagers. You can find the tweets from that session and slide presentations onmomokla.ug.

With the aim of making our meetings as inclusive as possible, and keeping in mind that the SIG meetings are meant to be for activists, developers, implementers, movers and shakers, if you think you could make a meaningful contribution please write to Dr Ashis Brahma with a note about how you would like to contribute so that he may include you on the list to receive announcements.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and hosts. SMS Media have upped their level of sponsorship to Mobile Monday Kampala by offering to provide management of the MoMoKla database. Edward Kasalirwe, Elly Businge and team have done a tremendous job of creating a plataform for automating MoMoKla event registration on momokla.ug. Hearty thanks also go to Douglas Onyango, Allan Nsengiyumva and Joseph Owino who are working on the intergration of the database into our website and improving its appearance. Watch this space! Apropos of which we would like to thank Mountbatten for increasing the level of their sponsorship by providing even greater web hosting facilities to MoMoKla. Thanks are also due to Orange Uganda, who were host to the mHealth meeting just described, especially to Edouard Blondeau, who has attended several mHealth meetings including follow up at their offices. Let me take this opportunity to invite telecoms and other companies, also aid agencies, NGOs and government agencies to host our future events. This is your MoMo.

Apropos of which I have the great pleasure to announce that Orange have kindly offered to host our next MoMoKla meeting, to be held in the downstairs conference room at their headquarters on Clement Hill Road on Monday 6th September. Guests should arrive by 5:30. Dr Michael Lipnick from Harvard’s Brigham and Mothers Hospital will be speaking about the pioneering work he is doing in the area of mHealth apps. Sean Blaschke, together with Andrew Kasola and Micheal Tendo from UTL will be presenting a film, followed by a demo during informal networking about an exciting public-private partnership to tackle the challenge of Vital Record Services in Uganda. Using an innovative approach rarely tried in the M4D field. UTL has developed a specialized USSD application which works on any mobile phone to capture and send community level information on births and deaths, which is then redirected to strategically placed printers at government mandated Registrar’s offices. This new system operates in real time, and at a fraction of the cost, of existing systems. We await confirmation on other speakers to be announced on the website shortly.

Stay tuned for updates.

With Kind regards, Daniel Stern

On behalf Mobile Monday Kampala