Mobile phones are becoming pervasive in developing regions, creating an opportunity to address data collection needs. Existing paper-based approaches are often slow and incomplete when compared to mobile phone based data collection methods.
To address this problem, UW CSE’s grad students Yaw Anokwa, Carl Hartung, and Waylon Brunette, along with Professor Gaetano Borriello, have built Open Data Kit (ODK), a set of mobile phone-based tools to help organizations collect, aggregate and visualize their data. The ODK project was featured in the October issue of IEEE Computer.
ODK tools have only been available for a few months, but uptake has been fast and broad. Examples include HIV counseling and testing in Kenya (as shown), deforestation monitoring in the Amazon, decision support for pediatric patients in Tanzania, and documenting war crimes in the Central African Republic.
Read the full article here. You can find more about the project here.