Software Support for Creating Digital Health Training Materials in the Field

In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and deployment of a tool developed to help rural health trainers to create digital training content for low-literate Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Lesotho, the digital content being mobile videos created from combining images, voice over, and/or video clips. Our results show that when health professionals who are based in rural areas were empowered by the tool to create their own content, they were able to supplement nationally and globally produced health training materials with more locally relevant content that addresses unique information needs within their communities. We discuss other lessons learned from an eight-months deployment of this tool in Lesotho, and conclude with recommendations on how a similar project can be implemented in other developing regions

Content Prototyping – An Approach for Engaging Non-Technical Users in Participatory Design

Many in the developing world have little to no experience with computers - they have never used software as part of their daily lives and jobs, so there is always a challenge for how this class of users can be engaged in Participatory Design in a manner that the value of their participation is not limited by their computing experience. This paper looks at previous work that addressed this challenge, and introduces an approach called content prototyping, which is an adaptation of existing practices to fit the needs of non-technical users. We also discuss the lessons learned from using this approach, and give rec-ommendations for related projects in the developing world

On the challenge of adopting standard EHR systems in developing countries

Electronic health record (EHR) systems are a popular mechanism for accessing health records in the developed world and have contributed towards improved and cost-effective health care management. However, the development of appropriate and scalable EHR systems in developing countries has been difficult to achieve because of certain limitations inherent in the technological infrastructure. In this paper, we present a comparative study of 19 EHR systems in terms of the security and usability of these systems within the context of the developing world. Our aim was to investigate whether online health services designed for developed countries can be adopted for EHR systems in developing countries. The investigation was based on a number of dimensions such as development environment, system platform, type and access control standards found in the National Institute for Standard and Technology (NIST) and Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). Our research indicates that all the systems evaluated require online access control decisions. Solely relying on an online access control system is limiting, particularly in developing countries where access to the server can be disrupted by a number of disastrous events

A Meta-Authoring Tool for Specifying Interactions in Virtual Reality Environments

When creating virtual reality environments a large amount of the interaction needs to be programmed. The problem with this is that non-computer expert users lack the programming skills necessary to create useful applications. Specifying interactions remains in the domain of the programmer. Creating a single, generic authoring tool for every different kind of application would be an impossible task { more so if the authors are non-programmers. A more realistic solution to the problem would be to think of every environment as having a particular context such as a virtual museum or gallery. Creating authoring tools specific to these types of environment contexts greatly reduces the problem. We have produced a progressive meta-authoring system that allows both novice and advanced users to create useful virtual reality applications, allowing the smooth migration of novice users to becoming more experienced. We believe that our system overcomes problems in architecture and support for novice users found in previous systems

Walking and the Social Life of Solar Charging in Rural Africa

We illustrate links between walking, sociality and using resources in a case-study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in two villages in Eastern Cape, South Africa. Like 360 million rural Sub-saharan Africans, inhabitants are poor and, like 25% and 92%, of the world respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We show that the ways we move through the world affect the meanings we embody; that certain representations obscure continuities in the practices we seek to understand and influence; and, some of the motivations of the billions of people who are marginalized in discussing sustainable HCI. Locally, about 65% of inhabitants over 14 years old own cell- phones and, over a year, we recorded 500 names of people using the Charging Stations that, we deployed within several technology probing endeavours, many on a regular basis. The detail of our longitudinal study contributes considerably to sustainable design for ‘developing’ regions. Walking is a noticeable part of charging, and all other subsistence rou- tines, and shapes inhabitants’ motivations when they use, re-purpose, store and share resources. Inhabitants are moti- vated by cost and comfort and, importantly, by performing collectivity in their tight-knit community; but, not by being green. Further, different ways of walking relate to social roles and other aspects of sociality and, we propose, shaped inhabitants’ and researchers’ perspectives on charging and using phones. We suggest this is significant for the methods and designs that we use to explore and support sustainable practices in rural Africa and, indeed, more generally