App/Software

Elizabeth Belding and Amr El Abbadi of the University of California at Santa Barbara in the U.S. will develop and test a low-cost cellular architecture with an integrated information system that can track an individual's immunization status, disseminate vaccine-related information, and track at-risk populations.

Jaranit Kaewkungwal of Mahidol University in Thailand proposes to develop a phone-to-phone application that will transmit photo and name pronunciation information among health care workers to help achieve vaccination targets among stateless hill-tribal children in Thailand. The application could be expanded to include maternal healthcare and childhood diseases and nutrition.

Eldin Wee Chuan Lim of the National University of Singapore will work to develop a cell phone application that converts cell phone camera images of irises into a mathematical algorithm that can be used to identify individuals in health care settings. This program could be used to administer and track immunization programs in developing countries.

David Sullivan of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the U.S., along with Martin N. Martinov of Gradient Biomodeling LLC, will create a quantum physics computer model of liver-stage malaria parasite infection to screen existing commercial drug and compound databases to identify molecules that possess liver-stage specific anti-malarial activity. Those molecules will then be tested in vivo and in vitro, and the ones that are effective will be optimized via computer modeling for future pre-clinical development.

Adithya Vasudevan of CHANGE in India will develop and test an application that uses low-cost fingerprint identification technology and GPS technology on mobile devices to identify, locate, and immunize children who have not received vaccinations for high-priority preventable diseases.

Mohit Kumar of the Hanseatic Institute of Technology in Germany will develop and test a simple biometrics program for its ability to identify children by analyzing images of their ears and foot creases captured by regular cell phone cameras. Images would be sent to a central server, which could then generate text messages back to healthcare workers and parents with health and vaccination information unique to that child.

Szabolcs Marka of Columbia University in the U.S. will develop acoustic software to locate mosquito swarms by their sound, thereby allowing elimination of thousands of breeding vector mosquitos that can cause diseases such as malaria. They have already demonstrated that they can acoustically detect a single distant mosquito in a noisy laboratory setting. They will further develop acoustic locator hardware and sensors targeting the common malaria mosquito Anopheles and field-test its performance in locating swarms from several tens of meters.

Ruifu Yang of the Chinese Military Academy of Medical Sciences in China will develop a database of DNA fingerprints for various pathogens and microbes. This database will allow researchers to quickly identify the pathogen responsible for an emerging disease, as well as the origin of that pathogen.

Arunjay Katakam of Weeve Limited in the United Kingdom will design a method to simplify mobile money payments so that individuals can pay at retail merchants by dialing a number on their mobile phones. Software will be developed along with a server and phone line for mobile payments. Customers will download an encrypted and secure mp3 file (ringtone) on their mobile phones that identifies them and is used to verify their transactions. Transactions are made by merchants first dialing a free phone number and entering the payment amount.

Claire Adida and Jennifer Burney of the University of California, San Diego, in the U.S. are developing a mobile money platform to enable the rural poor in West Africa to pay school fees directly and securely using mobile phones to help more children stay in school. Mobile money is not widely used in West Africa and many individuals do not use banks. Often money for things like school fees has to be physically transferred over long distances, which is unreliable and takes time. Recording payments is done largely by hand, which is error-prone and difficult to track.