UnaMesa Objectives for 2009

How can communities improve health care and education while reducing costs?
Based on four years of ethnographic research, pilot projects, and technology development, the UnaMesa Association has identified three innovations that can achieve these goals:

1) Digital distribution of health care and educational materials that supports immediate feedback and regional customization
2) Mobile data collection that supplements existing paper-based systems
3) Team based approaches to mentorship and other social services

We are actively working with several partners to incorporate these innovations into their existing services.
Plans for 2009 include:

• Working with the Hesperian Foundation, the non-profit publisher of Where There Is No Doctor, to update their texts and deliver vital health care information via mobile phones and related technologies. (Hesperian has received funding for this project from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.) Digital distribution will reduce costs while making healthcare knowledge accessible to more people.

• Working with educators in Bangladesh, the UK, and around the world to create Virtual Interactive Classroom (VIC), digital Student Notebook, and to share effective curriculum. These projects support remote learning using real-time, context specific messaging between students and educators. Pilot studies have shown that these techniques can create a better learning experience for students while reducing the costs of education.

(Note: This project is currently seeking additional technology and funding partners.)

• Working with the OpenMRS and OpenROSA projects to create a data gathering infrastructure that supports paper, web, and mobile phones. Organizations use these forms to gather the critical information needed to provide quality care. Pilot projects with Head Start programs and the American Indian Child Resources Center and others have demonstrated that augmenting existing paper forms with digital information (secure barcodes) and providing online versions of the forms can reduce paperwork while improving care.

(Note: For this project we are seeking an NGO partner that works with a range of clinics, schools, or other social service providers to help develop
best practices and roll out this infrastructure.)

• Working with the TeamPlay Foundation to build out and extend their team oriented approach of mentoring to a range of school based mentoring programs, patient support systems, and other social services. TeamPlay's combination of social networking tools with purposeful, goal oriented activities has generated excitement among both students and mentors during a pilot based in Oakland, CA. The TeamPlay approach significantly increases the chance of success for students while lowering the burden on mentors and reducing the cost of attracting and supporting mentors. (Note: This project is currently seeking additional funding and technology partners.)

Our mission is to create innovations that guarantee accessibility of critical information, provides bridges between data "silos," and erases the digital divide. We believe that creating this "digital common denominator" of freely available software tools and infrastructure will improve social services for both providers and beneficiaries while reducing costs.

We know from our field work and personal experience that most individual caregivers operate under extremely difficult circumstances. True innovations will come from this grassroots level as caregivers find better ways to deliver services and share their learnings with others. The tools themselves are just a starting point to make this sharing possible. That's why we've started the UnaMesa Academy as our principled approach to working with the staff members of our partner organizations and others to help them discover and spread the knowledge of what works best in serving their clients.

We greatly appreciate your suggestions and contributions in support of these and related efforts. For more details on specific objectives for 2009, please see below or follow our progress on the UnaMesa wiki: http://projects.unamesa.org/

Detailed project objectives for 2009

• Hesperian "Where There Is No Doctor" project
  • Develop and operate a wiki space for creating the Table of Contents
  • Evaluate, recommend, and implement content management systems for collaboration on initial chapters. Ensure that the system supports both online and off-line users.
  • Research community needs and create/design delivery systems that support local customizations while maintaining the integrity of health care information.
  • Work with ICSI (International Computer Science Institute) researchers and others to field test the "Semantic wiki" prototype for online delivery (http://www.hesperian.net/health/Main_Page) in conjunction with TiddlyWiki for offline delivery and modification.
• VIC and Student Notebook
  • Design and develop robust SMS response aggregation system
  • Update the MORE prototype and create tutorial for educators to use VIC approach
  • Complete demo site for the Student Notebook and report on pilot project
  • Identify funding partners to support SoftEd and other technology partners
  • Help Meridian and/or other partners to develop and share their curriculum via TiddlyWiki and SharedRecords
• Data Gathering
  • Work with Dimagi to develop a project plan and identify a project lead
  • Identify one or more community partners to serve as intermediaries for working with social service organizations
  • Extend TiddlyWiki to display XForms and serve as a platform for authoring forms that work across media (paper, web, mobile phones)
  • Work with OpenMRS, OpenRosa, and others to define best practices in data aggregation and sharing; leverage SharedRecords service to support these efforts
• TeamPlay
  • Develop a detailed project plan in conjunction with TeamPlay
  • Define and implement the web based APIs for the "TeamPanel" componemt
  • Create a set of processes to operate the "TeamPanel" component and interoperate with mentoring organizations and other sites
  • Identify additional developer and support resources to enable scaling of these services
• TiddlyWiki (A core technology component used in the above projects)
  • Continue helping the community to improve the reliability of the core product across operating environments
  • Integrate the data repository into the TiddlyWiki platform (see Data Gathering goal above)
  • Improve our support for the community by introducing a dynamic feedback mechanism
• SharedRecords (A core technology component used in the above projects)
  • Continue maintaining the service and software while increasing the reliability of the service
  • Focus on supporting partners as they develop and deploy services based on SharedRecords
  • Document and improve the processes for synchronizing multiple repositories