DataDyne Episurveyor
DataDyne.org is a not-for-profit consultancy creating groundbreaking mobile data products to serve public health and international development.
Formed in 2003 by physician/epidemiologist Joel Selanikio, formerly of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and technologist Rose Donna, formerly of the American Red Cross, DataDyne.org has consistently made an impact beyond its small size, winning praise from the World Health Organization and the CDC, grant awards from the UN Foundation and the World Bank, and consulting contracts from organizations, including the International Federation of the Red Cross, the American Red Cross, and the Aga Khan Foundation.
Driven by the desire to increase the quantity and quality of data available for worldwide public health, and thereby to positively impact the health of populations in developed and developing countries, DataDyne.org works with mobile information technologies, including handheld computers, mobile phones, the Internet, and GPS, to create sustainable information flow in developing countries, and to break down the barriers to data utilization.
Collecting Measles data in Zambia with Episurveyor
DataDyne.org's premier product is EpiSurveyor, a free, open-source software suite which makes it easy to collect data using handheld computers and smartphones. A winner of the World Bank's Development Marketplace Competition, and funded by the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation, EpiSurveyor was developed in Kenya and the USA in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, and piloted by the World Health Organization in Kenya, Zambia, and Burkina Faso, under the guidance of the CDC.
EpiSurveyor is now being used by 15 sub-Saharan African countries under the auspices of the ministries of health and the World Health Organization (WHO) -- which has adopted it as a standard for data collection in sub-Saharan Africa. EpiSurveyor is being used to collect data for a variety of purposes, including:
- Vaccination coverage surveys
- Water and sanitation evaluation
- Malaria and HIV-AIDS programs
- Clinic quality control & supervision
Because it’s free and easy to use, EpiSurveyor minimizes costs for governments, NGOs, and UN agencies, and greatly reduces the need for outside consultants. It can be adapted for a wide variety of situations where rapid, accurate data collection is essential, including disease outbreaks, coverage surveys, health program supervision, and supply-chain management.
Datadyne.org is preparing to release beta web- and mobile phone-based versions of EpiSurveyor in Q1 2009, and will be rolling them out in sub-Saharan Africa as part of the longstanding collaboration with the WHO.
DataDyne believes that programs like EpiSurveyor which combine an open-source model with leverage of the burgeoning mobile computing network have the ability to radically change the nature of developing-country public health practice by putting the tools for efficient public health data collection and analysis completely into the hands of developing-country health practitioners themselves, and by eliminating the dependence on expensive international consultants.
Adapted with permission from the DataDyne website, February 2009.
For more information on EpiSurveyor, including free downloads, please visit www.datadyne.org