I just received my copy of the book: Biosruveillance methods and case studies edited by Taha Kass-Hout and Xiaohui Zhang. I first met Taha in cyberspace when he was with InSTEDD, we had started a Google group: Biosurveillance, which we use as a knowledge-base. Their approach to disease surveillance was through “event-based surveillance” and our approach was through “indicator-based surveillance” but both converging at finding signals for timely public health alerts that would advocate early control measures. We had contributed three chapters in the context of the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program pilot (RTBP) – Chapter 9: “The role of Data Aggregation in Public Health and Food Safety Surveillance” – Artur Dubrawski Chapter 13: “User Requirements towards a Real-Time Biosurveillance Program” – Nuwan Waidyanatha and Suma Prashant Chapter 14: “Using Common Alerting Protocol to Support a Real-Time Biosurveillance Program in India and Sri Lanka” – Gordon A. Gow and Nuwan Waidyanatha.
The Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) held a news conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on September 14, 2010 at the Cinnamon Lake Side Hotel. This is list of the articles published in the News papers:
An interesting article on MIT’s website discusses how several business ventured started by its students spawned by class projects or independent work are exploring news ways of using the mobile phones for improving the day-to-day lives of people, particularly in the developing world. Applications range from mobile health-care services to agricultural and mobile payment services as well. Many were developed as entries for business competitions, or as part of the MIT Media Lab’s NextLab program to develop mobile phone applications geared toward the developing world. Read the full article here. *** LIRNEasia’s Mobile 2.