Hi all,I am the product manager at Medic Mobile, a nonprofit technology
company that builds and deploys mHealth tools
http://medicmobile.org/tools for communities around the world. Using ODK
we were able to quickly build an Android app that health workers can use in
some of the most rural places on earth. Health workers use the app to
register people into health programs, screen for high-risk pregnancies,
submit stock reports, report disease outbreaks, and more. I'm excited to
share the story of how we got there.I was fortunate to meet Gaetano at the
ICTD 2013 conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Our team had been
designing tools for basic phones so that we could reach people with the
lowest common denominator platform. Android phones were become more
prevalent for our target users, so I was keen to chat with the ODK folks
from UW showcasing the new ODK 2.0. The next-generation ODK had promising
features for our users - most notably visualizing data on mobile devices,
which could enable real time, data-driven adaptations to service
delivery.Gaetano hinted, not so subtly, that we should be using ODK. We did
not want to reinvent the wheel, but from what we could tell at the time the
first generation ODK seemed already in the process of being replaced, and
ODK 2.0 was still very much in Alpha.Within a year, we were seeing more
Android phones in the hands of health workers. There was a clear
opportunity to add to the Medic Mobile platform. We wanted to build with
existing components to save time, and since ODK 2.0 was not yet ready we
decided that the benefits of ODK v1 outweighed its potential obsolescence.
Over the course of a few weeks we built a Collect version
http://medicmobile.org/blog/medic-mobile-has-an-android-app-1 that
connected with our webapp via SMS to fill our immediate needs. Then a true
test for “Medic Collect” came up after the horrific earthquake in Nepal
that left over 9,000 people dead. We were able to quickly deploy a disease
outbreak surveillance system with the health workers’ Android phones and
SMS.We also embarked on a longer journey to bring our core webapp directly
to mobile users as an offline-enabled Android app
http://medicmobile.org/blog/we-built-the-mobile-app-health-workers-deserve.
This app presents community health workers with a prioritized list of
upcoming tasks as well as their progress towards their goals. Because this
is a browser based app, we incorporated the ODK-based Enketo Smart Paper as
the form renderer. After about six months of intensive development, we are
deploying our first project with the new Medic Mobile Android app next
week. We’re happy to provide more details on our approach, and we’ll be
sure to share lessons learned. Also, I am curious how everyone on the list
has been planning for ODK 2.0. How have you balanced building features for
a mature ODK v1 toolset while anticipating a v2 which, although not ready
for production, may already include improvements you want to use? Has
anyone else used (or considered using) Enketo on mobile devices?In the past
year our toolset has been dramatically enhanced by taking Gaetano’s advice.
We built these apps faster and more sustainably because of tools built by a
dedicated ODK community. Now we’re excited to be active participants!Kind
regards,Marc
Marc Abbyad | Product Manager
Medic Mobile http://www.medicmobile.org/ @MarcAbbyad
https://twitter.com/marcabbyad
@Medic http://www.twitter.com/medic Facebook
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