[RavenclawDev 406] No Olympus lunch today

[Antoine Raux]

Hi all,

Since Jahanzeb is giving a talk on "Technology Research for Developing 
Regions: Field Experiences from the HealthLine Project" (WeH5324, 12pm), 
which might be of interest to many of us, there won't be an Olympus 
lunch today. For those who haven't received the information about the 
talk, the abstract is below...*
***
**antoine**
**

**Technology Research for Developing Regions: Field Experiences from the 
HealthLine Project**

**Jahanzeb Sherwani, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University**

**                                    Wednesday, November 7, 12:00 
(Pizza will be served)**

**                                                Wean Hall 5324**

Recently, there has been much interest in using Information and 
Communications Technologies (ICTs) for the needs of developing regions.  
Various research projects have investigated the use of ICTs in domains 
such as education, healthcare, e-governance, and agriculture through 
different perspectives: Computer Science (including Human-Computer 
Interaction and Networking), Public Policy, Sociology, etc.  While the 
Computer Science publications that arise from such projects describe the 
technological aspects of the reseach, they rarely describe the 
on-the-ground lessons learnt in the field -- which are often 
rediscovered by researchers new to the field.

In this talk, I will describe my field experience in the HealthLine 
project, in which we are investigating spoken language interfaces for 
health information access by low literate community health workers in 
Pakistan.  The project began in January '06, and I made various trips to 
Pakistan throughout that year until moving to Pakistan in January '07.  
I will present our experiences in building research relationships with 
Pakistani organizations, in conducting a needs assessment with our 
target population, in identifying and collecting appropriate health 
content, and in designing, developing and testing a prototype with 
health workers.