Talk:Lentis/Cell Phones in Developing Countries

Introduction

 * Limit scope to subset of developing countries
 * Focus on low and lower middle income countries
 * If possible, include world bank map of developing countries
 * Clarify difference between cell phones and smartphones
 * Support difference with cell phone ownership data
 * Discuss uses of cell phones in developing countries
 * Provide brief overview of general uses
 * Expand on specific uses in health and banking

mHealth
Overview of cell-phone based health interventions in LMIC countries

Includes - data gathering - training community health workers - providing health info directly to patients

mHealth - definition - potential: breaking the "iron triangle" of health care; cost, access, quality - advantages - challenges

Case Study: India

- Efforts to lower maternal and infant mortality - Govt of India (ministry of health) partnering with Grameen Foundation - Also, "SMART Health India is a project developed by The George Institute for Global Health in Oxford, UK." - Disorganized efforts; benefits (mini trial runs), disadvantages (inefficient use of resources)

Challenges: - case study: unmarried women banned from using cell phones - women in developing countries have less access to cell phones, if their family does have a phone it is usually controlled by the man - Note: there have been some efforts to address this; see videos for Indian men telling them it's manly to take care of their wife and children properly - many languages spoken in India; creating content for all users is difficult Potentially link to Lentis/Social Obstacles to Public Health in Developing Countries for more info on health issues and challenges.

Also; connection to leapfrogging Generally you make health centers and/or clinics and use them to get data on the population. mHealth allows you to get data and then use that data to determine where to build clinics and how to most efficiently deliver health care resources

JPreston (discuss • contribs) 02:15, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

mPesa

 * Mobile banking, examples:
 * iPhone/Android, digital wallets
 * Venmo
 * Apple Pay
 * M-Pesa


 * M-Pesa
 * Developing countries don’t use Venmo: M-Pesa
 * M-Pesa is a service similar to Venmo, but can be operated purely through SMS text messaging
 * M → mobile, pesa → money in Swahili
 * Registration:
 * To register, you go to an M-Pesa kiosk and meet with an agent.
 * You give them an ID and register your phone with a pin.
 * You can then give them cash to load onto your account.
 * Use / navigation:
 * To use the system you navigate to your phone carrier menu (Safaricom) and then M-Pesa.
 * Select what kind of transaction you want to make, enter your phone number, the amount, and pin.
 * If, at any point, you want to withdraw paper cash from the system, you go to an M-Pesa agent who can help you with this.
 * Scale:
 * 21.8 million adults on MPesa
 * 46 * .58 = ~26 million adults in Kenya (age 15+)
 * Sum of MPesa transactions ~= 40% of Kenyan GDP
 * Participants:
 * MPesa users
 * Safaricom / vodafone
 * Government of Kenya
 * Major banks e.g. Commercial Bank of Africa, Bank of Africa

M-Pesa is a mobile money service offered by Vodafone [1]. Launched in 2007 [4], M-Pesa is the largest cashless service in Kenya by transaction value, transaction count, customer count, and merchant count [5]. In 2016, there were 24 million registered M-Pesa users, with over 16 million 30-day active users. The same year, the sum of transactions through M-Pesa amounted to over Shs 5 trillion (50 billion USD).

Mobile money refers to the use of mobile devices to access financial services [6].

Mobile money is booming in the developing world. ZAAD, eZ Cash, SMART money, GCash, and M-Pesa are mobile money services that have launched in the last decade in LMIC countries [3]. In 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for the majority of mobile money services.

Ajv4dg (discuss • contribs) 21:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Conclusion

 * Discuss leapfrogging
 * General idea
 * Countries can skip developmental stages
 * Classic example: developing countries skipping landlines and going straight to cell phones
 * Skipping stages saves time and money
 * Allows less developed countries to quickly close gap between them and developed ones
 * Same technology != same social context
 * Path that technology follows when it is introduced changes the social context
 * Skipping stages creates different path for technology
 * mHealth
 * Collect data about health before building clinics, instead of building clinics to collect data
 * Helps break iron triangle typically associated with health clinics (?)
 * Health info introduced via a different path, so viewed in a different social context
 * Designers of mHealth systems must consider alternative social contexts
 * mPesa
 * Skip brick-and-mortar banks
 * Allows for access to banking without extensive infrastructure
 * Suggest future work
 * Expand to upper middle income developing countries
 * Investigate other uses of cell phones (sending text messages, getting political news, etc.)
 * Research social implications of cell phones and increased connectivity
 * Potentially link to:
 * Lentis/Compulsive_Connectivity - drawbacks of increased connectivity
 * Lentis/Sociology_of_Texting - social implications of texting
 * Discuss balance between quickly implementing technology and privacy/security concerns
 * Expand on possible limitations of leapfrogging
 * Analyze instances where it failed to work

Sdgennari (discuss • contribs) 21:42, 8 December 2016 (UTC)