Nokia Siemens Networks

Inside the buzz factory: Pop!Tech 2008

Pop!Tech 2008, October 22-25: setting the agenda for social change.

This year’s Pop!Tech focuses on the global disparity between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance in areas ranging from digital social networks to environ-mentalism, from biology to business, from peacemaking to politics.

The three-day summit, sponsored in part by Nokia Siemens Networks, brings together 600 visionary leaders and thinkers from the sciences, technology, business, design, the arts, education, government and culture. Together they will explore the cutting-edge ideas, emerging technologies and new forces of change that are shaping our collective future.

Technology saving lives

The event is filled with lectures and round-table discussions to show how technology can make a difference.

One key focus of this year’s event is the first Pop!Tech Accelerator project called Project Masiluleke.
 
Project Masiluleke (which means “wise counsel and lend a helping hand” in Zulu) is focused on employing mobile phone technologies as a high impact, low cost tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS (and TB) in South Africa. This initiative will reach millions of people across the entire country, connecting hundreds of thousands to information and support, in a way that can be easily scaled up and rolled out worldwide.
 
The Mobile Opportunity
 
Mobile phones hold tremendous untapped promise as a tool for public engagement around HIV. Because more than 90% of the South Africa’s population has access to these devices, mobile phones can be cost-effectively used to:

• close the healthcare ‘information gap’ by delivering geographically and culturally appropriate messages that encourage people to learn their HIV status earlier
• connect people to existing “on the ground” HIV clinical services for testing and treatment
• increase people’s adherence to ARV regimens once in treatment 

Speaking at a similar-themed conference recently, Manager of the Biomedical Informatics Research Division, Medical Research Council of South Africa Chris Seebregts highlighted the importance of mobile phones for person-to-person clinic interactions and self-diagnosis in remote locations in South Africa.

"We have a good experience in the use of mobile technology to interact with clinics and patients, counselling on HIV and assisting patients in self diagnosis in case they can't access a health center. This is better than going to the health center, sitting on a bench waiting the whole day for a doctor."

Seebregts also noted that most people in South Africa have no access to the internet and their access to computers is limited. "We are fortunate in South Africa because we have an advanced cellular network.”

To be sure, as connectivity improves in places other South Africa, more and more opportunities for e-health will present themselves to governments, healthcare, and aid organizations.

The stakes could not be any higher. Hope is scarce for people with HIV in South Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. And opportunities for improvement are abundant. Making this an ideal topic for discussion at this year’s Pop!Tech.

To learn more about Project Masiluleke, or any of the other subjects covered at this year’s Pop!Tech, please visit the Pop!Tech website.