Airtel, IBM Research Africa and Kenya's Echo Mobile have joined forces
to launch several initiatives to help curb the spread of Ebola in West
Africa.
The initiatives include a citizen engagement and analytics
system in Sierra Leone that enables communities affected by Ebola to
communicate their issues and concerns directly to the government; a donation of
IBM Connections technology in Nigeria to strengthen the Lagos State
government’s preparedness for future disease outbreaks; and a global platform
for sharing Ebola-related open data.
The efforts combine expertise from IBM’s global network of
research labs with the company’s years of experience in humanitarian disaster response by applying
mobile technology, data analytics and cloud computing to help governments and
relief agencies as they seek to contain the deadly disease.
The work benefits from contributions from a number of partners
including Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, Cambridge University’s
Africa’s Voices project, Airtel and Kenya’s Echo Mobile.
IBM’s new Africa research lab, in collaboration with Sierra Leone’s Open Government
Initiative, has developed a system that enables citizens to report
Ebola-related issues and concerns via SMS or voice calls.
It provides actionable insight to the government about the
day-to-day experiences of communities directly affected by Ebola to help
improve its strategy for containing the disease.
“For us to tackle Ebola, it is crucial to maintain an open
dialogue between the government and the people of Sierra Leone,” said
Khadija Sesay, Director of Sierra Leone’s Open Government
Initiative. “IBM has enhanced our work on citizen engagement through the
use of innovative technology and opened up an effective communication channel
with the general public so that we can learn from their input and create
actionable policies in the fight against Ebola.”
Tapping supercomputing power and analytics capabilities via the
cloud, the system is able to rapidly identify correlations and highlight
emerging issues across the entire data set of messages. As the SMS and voice
data are location specific, IBM is then able to create opinion-based heat-maps
which correlate public sentiment to location information.
For example, it has already brought to light specific regions
with growing numbers of suspected Ebola cases which require urgent supplies
like soap and electricity, as well as faster response times for body collection
and burials.
The system has also highlighted issues with the diagnosis of
Ebola empowering the government to approach the international community to
request more testing facilities and equipment.
“As Africa’s first technology research lab, we are uniquely
positioned to use innovation to help tackle some of the continent’s biggest
challenges,” said Dr. Uyi Stewart, Chief Scientist, IBM Research, Africa. “We
saw the need to quickly develop a system to enable communities directly
affected by Ebola to provide valuable insight about how to fight it.
“Using mobile technology, we have given them a voice and a
channel to communicate their experiences directly to the government.”
The system uses radio broadcasts to encourage people to get in
touch and express their opinions. Cambridge University’s Africa's Voices
project has helped to develop a radio engagement model, incorporating questions
into public service announcements to elicit feedback from citizens in both
English and Krio, one of Sierra Leone's most widely spoken languages.
“Radio is a powerful medium in Africa but its potential to
gather and analyze audience feedback has not been fully seized,” said Dr.
Sharath Srinivasan, Director of Cambridge University’s Centre of Governance and
Human Rights. “We are working with IBM to offer people across Sierra Leone a
channel to voice their opinions and, crucially, to ensure that the data is
rapidly analyzed and turned into valuable insight about the effectiveness of
public service announcements and possible public misconceptions about
Ebola.”
Telco operator, Airtel has set up the toll-free number via which
citizens are able to send SMS messages.
“Mobile technology is Africa’s most powerful communications
platform providing an important channel for reaching large numbers of the
population,” said Sudipto Chowdhury, Managing Director, Airtel, Sierra Leone.
“As one of Africa's leading mobile operators, we will do everything we can to
ensure that mobile technology contributes to tackling the spread of Ebola and
we are partnering with IBM to ensure the effective flow of information between
the government and the citizens of Sierra Leone.”
The SMS data is anonymized by Kenyan start-up Echo mobile which
specializes in leveraging basic mobile phones to give voice to underserved
communities.
“We're working to make sure that the stream of messages from
patients, health workers and the general public can be used to augment the
response effort and provide a direct and near real-time view of the situation
on the ground," said Jeremy Gordon, Product Director, Echo Mobile.
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