Balberan, Jan Maxin R.             ITETHIC                                 April 11, 2008

 

Voxiva Case Study Guide Questions

 

 

1. What is the innovation of Voxiva?

    

To provide web based solutions in developing countries by the usage of village phones that will real time report about the user’s health to the health authorities.

 

2. What are the 3 ingredients of an effective system of disease surveillance and response?

    

   • real-time collection of information from a distributed network of people
   • rapid analysis of data and distribution of resources
   • communicating back to the source in reponse

 

3. According to Meyer, what are his findings regarding ICT projects?

    

·        Most projects were deployed on a pilot basis and were fundamentally not scalable. Making a system work in one village in India is very different from making it work 600,000 villages in India.

·        Projects were overwhelmingly focused on connectivity and devices – building out networks or putting computers in schools – rather than on applications that addressed critical information flow challenges.

·        There was too much focus on the internet and computer as a solution, particularly given the challenges of electricity, hardware and maintenance costs, training, and literacy.”

 

4. What is Meyer's observations regarding the use of telephones worldwide?

    

People are unaware on the use of telephone. Telephones are less costly in providing communication and more accessible to the public.

 

5. What was the problem that Voxiva was originally designed to solve?

    

Voxiva is created to give solutions of the problems in third world countries but they need to monitor new cases of disease and to answer it as soon as possible.

 

6. What are Alerta Pilot's benefits?

    

·        It is intuitive to use and accessible

·        It allows for quicker, better informed decision making health authorities and better allocation of scarce resources

·        It fosters better data quality because data is entered directly by users in the field and validated at the source.

·        It allows for rapid feedback of information to the field and can be used to reinforce the skills and knowledge of health workers in the field.

·        It reduces the paperwork burden on health workers in the field

·        It promotes transparency and accountability by making information available at multiple levels simultaneously

·        It is cost-effective relative to the current system and other IT rollouts because it leverages the existing telecommunications infrastructure and has an open structure to seamlessly link to legacy system.

 

7. How can Voxiva help eradicate diseases?

    

Voxiva helps the health workers to discover and educated them with many diseases which are discovered earlier before the occurrence. With this, the health worker will manage or responds to situation or even avoid its occurrence.

 

8. How can Voxiva be used for bioterrorism preparedness?

    

It was used by US to determine signs of bioterrorism.

 

9. What are some of the lessons learned in Voxiva's deployment in other countries?

    

·        Foster two-way information flows

·        Leverage existing infrastructure

·        Avoid stovepipes

·        Software is not a system

·        Technology alone will fail

 

10. What are some of Voxiva's challenges?

     

·        Attract more people that will working together

·        Make new business and efficiently deliver quality services

·        Focus on opportunities and evade interruptions

·        Have long sales cycles to governments and international development agencies

·        Generate profits

·        Manage team and continuous improvement

 

 

11. What is Meyer's beliefs regarding diversity? What is its connection to innovation?

     

Meyer believes that BOP is a market where the product will productively benefit. The people is a possible market where make innovative outputs and ideas

 

12. Can this system be implemented in the Philippines? What target disease would you recommend?

     

Yes, since the Philippines is the texting capital of the world, most people have their devices. The new service will combine both technology and health that will make your mobile phones an innovative gadget. Mosquito diseases since this target any Filipinos regardless of ones age.