Sunday, July 22, 2007

WSA 2003 Winner TeleDoc.org Receives Media Attention

TeleDoc is a project of Jiva Institute, an India-based non-profit research and development organization that aims to foster sustainable development by producing innovations. Launched as a pilot project in 15 villages in Haryana in April 2003, TeleDoc provides handheld mobile phone devices to village-based health workers in India, permitting them to communicate with doctors remotely.

TeleDoc uses java-enabled mobile telephones to provide real-time ability to record and transmit diagnostic information that doctors can analyze and then prescribe medication and treatment. At a regional office, medicines are prepared and picked up by field workers, and delivered to patients in their homes through a network of pharmacies and delivery personnel. The approximate cost of this entire process is 70 rupees (US$1.50) per consultation, which is pretty impressive.

TeleDoc won the World Summit Award for eHealth in 2003 at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Jiva is an organization based out of Faridabad (Haryana) promoting Ayurveda techniques.

In my view, TeleDoc signifies yet another indigenous IT solution to healthcare issues in India. There are plenty of such isolated efforts in existence today (just read about Andhra Pradesh and TamilNadu government’s Disease Surveillance Solution implemented by Voxiva) and hopefully will be the agents of change.

source : http://www.wsis-award.org/





The world best educational content, AeL eContent, nominated at ICT Prize

European Commission nominated interactive content AeL developed by SIVECO Romania at Prizes for Information Society (ICT Prizes)

Bucharest, 5 February 2007 – European Commission announced the nominees for 2007 at European ICT Prize. The AeL eContent, developed by SIVECO Romania is on the nominees list. (http://ict-prize.org).

This performance is truly exceptional, ICT Prize being the most important European competition who rewards the innovation in information and communication technology – an Oscar for IT (The European ICT Prize is the most distinguished Prize for innovative products and services in the field of Information Society Technologies)

SIVECO Romania was nominated twice in 2 years in this impressive international competition. The exigency of this competition must be mentioned. A product is evaluated and ranked by the European ICT Prize evaluation group, consisting of independent experts from 16 countries nominated by Euro-CASE and agreed by the European Commission before being nominated.

Thus, from 450 applications from 30 countries were nominated the most innovative 70. The winners for the European ICT Grand Prize will be selected among the 70 Prize Nominees. They will be announced on www.ict-prize.org on 19 February 2007.

The AeL educational content is an example of best practice for new tendency in eLearning, more than 1650 math, biology, geography lessons are available in 4800 schools from Romania through IT-based Educational System (SEI) program. The program offers Romanian schools the opportunity to use the best educational content in the world.

IT Based Educational System (SEI) is a complex program initiated by the Ministry of Education and Research in 2001, aiming to offer ITC support for the Romanian education system.

The program supports the educational reform objectives according to the eEurope 2005 action plan initiated by the European Union and conform to the European eLearning initiative.

About ICT Prize

The European ICT Prize is organised by Euro-CASE, the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering, with the sponsorship and support of the ICT Programme of the European Commission.

Euro-CASE, the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering, is a European non-profit-making organization of national academies from 20 European countries. Euro-CASE has access to top level European experience and provides impartial, independent and balanced advice on technological issues with a clear European dimension.

The individual members of the Euro-CASE academies are elected for their excellence and knowledge in specific fields and for their contributions to technologic, scientific, economic and social progress. This unique resource of experts, counting 6,000 individual Fellows of 20 national academies, is the core of Euro-CASE.

The Prize from 1995 to 2005 - some numbers

  • 3,358 applications from 33 countries
  • 257 Nominees from 22 countries (the Nominees were introduced in 2002)
  • 240 Winners from 23 countries
  • 30 Grand Prize Winners from 12 countries
source : http://www.siveco.ro/press_release_details.jsp?ID=509