Call for Volunteers to Participate in Upcoming Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) Workshops

Dear Colleagues,

We are looking for your input on innovations that you are aware of within a developing country or region for our project, The Humanitarian Technology Challenge. We are asking for help from you or someone that you may know, to fill out a brief survey to give us a better sense of the landscape in these areas.

As you know, the HTC is initially focused in three key areas. The areas are:

- Reliable Electricity - Availability of electric power for lighting and other electronic devices in resource-constrained environments is important for education, communications, and economic development.

- Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices - Establishing the capability of exchanging data among remote field offices and central health facilities is important for accessing treatment protocols, creating and monitoring health trends, and sharing results of treatments.

- Individual Patient IDs Tied to Health Records - Consistent availability of patient medical records is important for ongoing treatment of patients, especially migrants and those with chronic diseases.

The survey is 10 questions long. If you know of an exciting project being done with alternative energy, for example, you could fill out one survey for that. If you also know of a project on data connectivity, you could fill out a second survey on that. You can fill out as many surveys as there are projects.

We will collect this information and hopefully build a better picture of what global initiatives already exist in these three areas so that we can learn from, and interact with them. The information collected will also serve as critical input to the HTC Solution Development Process. We will provide you with a copy of the final report, with appropriate credit for the source of the information.

The projects that you identify do not have to be successes - we can also learn a great deal from constructive failures. The survey can be found on-line here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ZRVuNDUbHd5BF7yryQ_2belg_3d_3d.

Humanitarian Technology Challenge Launches Student Design Competition

IEEE is sponsoring a Regional Student Design Competition for solutions to one of three humanitarian problems as part of the joint IEEE-United Nations Foundation Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC). The competition runs from Oct. 2009 to May 2010.

HTC is a partnership among humanitarians, technologists, funders, and others, to develop implementable technological solutions to some key challenges facing humanitarian health and disaster workers today. The participants volunteer their time to collaborate for the benefit of humanity.

Three challenges have been identified:

1. Reliable Electricity: Availability of electric power for lighting and other electronic devices in resource-constrained environments. Important for education, communications, and economic development.

2. Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices: Capability of exchanging data among remote field offices and central health facilities. Important for accessing treatment protocols, creating and monitoring health trends, and sharing results of treatments.

3. Individual ID Tied to Health Records: Consistent availability of patient medical records. Important for ongoing treatment of patients, especially migrants and those with long-term diseases.

The Regional Student Design Competition challenges students to provide a working prototype, scale model or detailed engineering design specifications for a project that satisfies one of the three Challenges. The project can be developed by student individuals or by student teams. Teams must be led by an IEEE student member.

More information about the HTC project, and detailed descriptions of the challenges, can be found at www.ieeehtc.org. Rules for the Regional Student Design Competition can be found at www.ieeehtc.org/students.

If you have any questions about the survey, the student competition, or the HTC please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Harold Tepper
Senior Technical Project Manager -- Humanitarian Technology Challenge
IEEE Technical Activities
Phone: +1 732-465-6671
h.tepper@ieee.org