Fighting infectious disease with data.
Mosquitoes are abundant in tropical climates like Panama’s, so the population faces a heightened risk of mosquito-borne diseases. To alleviate this threat, Panama has 500 vector technicians who identify mosquito breeding sites for elimination. But they were having trouble tracking mosquito and disease data in real time, so the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies and IBM Corporate Citizenship partnered to develop a more efficient way for the technicians to share their findings. The volunteers from IBM developed an app that digitized the technicians’ tedious, manual data-tallying process and expedited the transfer of data to government decision makers. The process which used to take weeks now has the potential to take hours, so infectious diseases may buzz off faster.
7 years ago
