TECHNOLOGY: IRIN's Pick of the Year 2011

Computers and mobile phones are already essential to humanitarian planning, and 2011 saw the growth of technology-based humanitarian interventions, from the use of GPS (global positioning systems) to provide early weather warnings to real-time health reporting.

Here is a round-up of IRIN articles on important humanitarian technology in 2011...

EpiCollect, developed by Imperial College, London, allows the geospatial collation of data collected by mobile phone; Kenyan vets are using it for disease surveillance, monitoring outbreaks, treatments, vaccinations and animal deaths...

Using FrontlineSMS - an open-source software enabling users to send and receive text messages with groups of people - village malaria workers in Cambodia can now report, in real time, all malaria cases in their villages to the Malaria Information and Alert System in Phnom Penh with a simple text message, including the patient's name, age, location and type of parasite...