Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MSDirector, Health Informatics and Biosurveillance

Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters

COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH AND

HUMANITARIAN ACTION AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

Photo credit: IRMA (Integrated Risk Management for Africa)

Co-sponsored CDC's National Center for Health Marketing, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Georgia State University Department of Communication, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and the National Public Health Information Coalition.

CDC Focus On Users: Underserved Populations

March 2-3, 2009

WHAT KINDS OF TECHNOLOGIES WILL HELP US ADAPT TO A

CHANGING WORLD AND PREPARE FOR THE

UNEXPECTED?

Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 2004

IN OUR OPINION, COLLABORATION MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

• You and the diverse groups you now need to work with join forces, share your data, and keep each other in sync.

• Information flows rapidly, securely, reliably, up, down, and sideways.

• You work together to analyze the data stream, identify patterns, and synthesize it into actionable information.

• The response is agile, coordinated, efficient, and effective

A FEW REASONS WHY IT SELDOM DOES…

• Harsh field conditions

• Slow, unreliable networks

• Hot, tired, overloaded responders

• Low signal-to-noise ratio

• Data trapped in silos

• Disincentives for cooperation

• Lack of good tools for emergent collective action

• How to include the local community?

Open source software for closing the global collaboration gap

The InSTEDD TECHNOLOGY Platform

1. InSTEDD Mesh4X: Share Data Across All Boundaries

– MESH4X lets you integrate applications, devices, and information seamlessly into a shared, synchronized, distributed data mesh

2. InSTEDD GeoChat: Take Decisive Action in Response

– GEOCHAT lets you engage and coordinate with everyone who needs to be involved, linking headquarters, field, and the local community

3. InSTEDD Evolve: Synthesize Data into Actionable Information

– EVOLVE lets you and your team monitor and collaborate around diverse data streams to detect, analyze, triage and track critical events as they unfold

Geospatially-aware group messaging service for mobile field coordination

GeoChat 1.0 Fully-Inclusive Mobile Comms

Using GeoChat during an Avian Influenza Community Response Exercise

GeoChat

Features:

• Create, join, and participate in chat groups using SMS, email, or a web client on the surface of a map

• Location information in messages is automatically extracted, so that you can see who said what, when, and where

• International SMS gateway, Twitter gateway, and local gateway options

• Full SMS command line interface

• Public, private, and anonymous group configurations

• Broadcast alerts to the entire team

• Relay RSS/ATOM feeds of critical data over SMS

Gateway Settings

Setup RSS Feed

GeoChat

Features:

• Twitter has over 120 million subscribers. Its an unproven, consumer platform for crisis coordination, or alerting, but for citizen reporting it has been measured to lead the news by a significant margin.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/4269765/New-York-plane-crash-Twitter-breaks-the-news-again.html

GeoChat

SE Asia Region (Source: Wikipedia)

The Komphun rural Health Center serves over 7000 population in the Stung Treng and neighboring provinces.

Avian Influenza Exercise: Stung Treng Province, Cambodia, October 13-15, 2008

Geochat Group n %Blue1 (simulated cross-border—Champasak) 4 7.5

Green1 (Kampot) 4 7.5Green2(Takeo) 2 3.8

Green3 (Kompong Speu) 2 3.8Green4 (Ratanakiri) 0 0

Green5 (Mondulkiri) 2 3.8Green6 (Kampong Cham) 3 5.7

Yellow1 (Rapid Response Team) 6 11.3Yellow2 (Provincial Health and Reference Hospital) 18 34

Yellow3 (Authorities) 7 13.2Yellow4 (Others) 5 9.4

Cell phone use during the Avian Influenza Exercise: Stung Treng Province, Cambodia, October 13-15, 2008

GeoChat

GeoChat Message Khmer Translation (using English characters)1. Does anyone have a car?2. We need medicine3. We need PPEs4. Who is the head of village?5. Family needs food6. I need mazut (gasoline)7. No gathering allowed at Pagoda8. Is market open?9. Is school open?10. I need an ambulance11. Can we help?12. What can we do to help?13. Do you have extra medicine?14. Yes, we have extra medicine15. Do you have enough medicine?16. No, we don’t have any medicine17. Can we get help with Quarantine

1. Teu nak na mean lan te?2. Yeun trov ka thnam3. Yeun trov ka PPE4. Nor na chea prathean phom?5. Cruosa trov ka aha6. Knhon trov ka mazut7. Men anugnat ouy mean ka choub chum nov wat8. Te phsa boeuk reu nov?9. Te sala boeuk reu nov?10. Knom trov ka lanpet11. Teu mean avey ouy yeung chhouy te?12. Ter yerng ach chuoy avey ban?13. Ter neak mean thnam bonthem te?14. Bat yerng mean thnam15. Ter neak mean thnam krob kran te?16. Te yerng khmean thnam te17. Ter yerng ach tor tuol chumnuoy pi Quarantine te?

Avian Influenza Exercise: Stung Treng Province, Cambodia, October 13-15, 2008

Total Messages (exercise only) Exchanged during the morning of the AI Simulation Exercise, October 15, 2008, Stung Treng, Cambodia

General messages exchanged among field workers, first responders, authorities, and government officials at CDC and provisional levels.

GeoChat Ideas for the Future

Features:

• Import additional data layers

– Upload your own KML layer and combine with GeoChat conversations [e.g., flooded areas, destroyed buildings]

– Sync structured data onto the map via HTTP or SMS

• Group management via SMS for field

• Gateway with plugged-in phone support for international characters /if the phone supports them/

• A US short code in summer (we cant promise dates)

GeoChat Ideas for the Future

Features:

• Offline client for disconnected operations

• Pluggable encryption

• Sensor integration

• PDA client

• Social Networking

• Integrated Analytics – tag clouds, machine learning, entity extraction, clustering, etc.

• Radio integration? Voice? Video?

A synchronization framework for seamless information sharing

Mesh4X 1.0 Adaptive Data Mesh Integration

Features:

• Fuse diverse applications, data sources, and devices

• Synchronize data automatically between databases, files, websites, desktop software, PDAs, maps, and the Cloud…

• Synchronize via HTTP or SMS

• Detect conflicts automatically

• Available in both .NET and Java

• Open standards: Microsoft FeedSync, RSS/ATOM, XForms, RDF

A synchronization framework for seamless information sharing

Mesh4x Framework

Mesh4X 1.0

Benefits:

• Database, device, application and platform independent

• Make changes anywhere. See the changes everywhere.

• Socio-politically neutral, “masterless” architecture

• Distributed, redundant storage

• Sync without Internet

• Work disconnected

Mesh4x High-Level Architecture: The Mesh4X – Epi Info™ Prototype

Mesh4X 1.0

Mesh4X – Epi Info™:

• Peer-to-Peer Synchronization

• Cloud Synchronization

Peer-to-Peer Synchronization

Cloud Synchronization

Peer-to-Peer or Cloud Map Synchronization

Human Expertise. Machine Learning. Evolve your Understanding.

EVOLVE 1.0 Collaborative Event Warning & Decision Support

Evolve: Collaborative Event Warning & Decision Support

Evolve 1.0

Features:

• Create collaborative workspaces, invite colleagues, subscribe to data sources you choose to monitor

• Interact securely with your team to sift through the data stream for emerging events

• Annotate items with tags, comments, ratings, links, locations, files, alerts, and other social metadata

• Autonomous agents perform data fusion, feature extraction, classification, tagging, geo-coding

• Integrated hypothesis formation, visualization, machine learning

Evolve 1.0

Benefits:

• Detect emerging critical events sooner and enable your team to take the right action earlier.

• Allow human experts and autonomous agent-based analytic services to augment one another’s efforts.

• Pattern detection algorithms learn from past events – and your team’s characterization of them – to improve performance the next time around.

• Fully extensible open source platform allows you to incorporate your own data sources, services, and embedded modules.

Thank you

Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS

400 Hamilton Avenue, Suite 120

Palo Alto, CA 94301

USA

+1.650.353.4440

+1.877.650.4440 (toll-free in the US)

info@instedd.org

Cambodia, Photo taken by Taha Kass-Hout, October 2008

“this pic says it all- our kids are all the same- they deserve the same”, Comment by Robert Gregg on Facebook, October 2008