are quite heterogeneous in many respects, projects typically need some
adjustments to work well with new
partners, a different culture, or a different government. Both scaling and
replication are active areas of multidisciplinary research, and CS has a critical role to play, given its direct impact
on sustainability.
a few sample Projects
We have selected four sample ICTD
projects that illustrate some of the issues discussed thus far. The projects
focus on four different topics—
telemedicine, assistive technology, microfinance, and education—all in the
context of developing regions. Each
example highlights different challenges and characteristics of the ICTD
field. Together, these projects reflect
CS-related innovation in the areas of
systems, networking, HCI, and AI. The
past proceedings of the International
Conference on Information and Com-
munication Technologies and Development offer a much larger sampling
of current or recent research efforts in
the ICTD field. Several other examples
and an overview of ICTD are also provided in a recently published special
edition of IEEE Computer.
8
Rural Telemedicine: The Aravind Eye
Care Hospital in southern India is a
world leader in high-volume low-cost
eye care. Working in the state of Tamil
Nadu, Aravind served over 2. 4 million
patients last year and performed over
280,000 cataract surgeries. More than
half the patients receive free or discounted eye care—they are subsidized
by paying customers—and the hospitals have been financially self-sustaining for decades.
Despite this success, until recently
Aravind had limited reach into rural
areas; patient surveys indicated that
most patients came from within 20km
of a hospital and that only 7% of rural
patients had access to any kind of eye
care. After several iterations, it became
clear that the solution was to create
rural vision centers (VCs) consisting
of 1–2 rooms, a nurse, a technician
(to make eyeglasses), and notably the
means for high-quality doctor/patient
videoconferencing. This “video solution,”
7 developed at UC Berkeley, uses
novel long-distance WiFi links that are
low-cost, low-power, and typically deliver 4Mb/s–6Mb/s between the hospital and the VC over distances ranging
from a few to tens of kilometers. (The
same basic technology has also been
extended to go 382km in Venezuela.)
Having successfully completed a
five-VC pilot in early 2006, Aravind now
has 24 VCs in operation via a mix of WiFi
and DSL (in more urban areas). Some
5,000 patients use the video service per
month, with over 100,000 through the
end of 2008 having used the WiFi links.
Of these 100,000, over 15,000 were effectively blind (primarily due to refractive problems or cataracts), but can now
Researchers from Cmu’s techBridge World are working with the mathru school for the Blind outside Bangalore, india, to enhance
the teaching and learning process for writing Braille through the use of a low-cost writing tutor that gives audio feedback to students.
PhotograPhs courtesy of techbriDge WorLD at carnegie meLLon uniVersity
