ChangeMedium

#cmToronto Research Presentations

Saturday is the first #ChangeMedium event bringing together researchers and developers together on the medium for change. We’re going to hear from 2 great researchers and spend the afternoon - well -  building stuff. More on those presentations below.

There are still some spaces for those of you with development skills (sign up here). If you can’t make it or want more info, join our group.

Hope to see you there.

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#cmToronto Research Presentations

Hima Batavia (McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health)
Mobile Health: “The great equalizer”

• With almost 4 billion people globally having access to mobile phones, the technology has emerged as a valuable tool to address gaps in healthcare delivery. Touted as “the great equalizer” by Desmond Tutu, the use of mobile phones in health data collection, treatment compliance and prevention in the developing world has yielded positive results. While challenges remain, the impact SMS specifically has had on this movement is significant. This talk will seek to draw lessons from mobile health initiatives, allowing participants to understand the past, to better predict the future.
• Hima Batavia is a Research Assistant with the Mclaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health and The Earth Institute based out of Columbia University. Her interests were developed as result of experiences working in Kenya with a small health-focused NGO called Matibabu Foundation through the Canadian International Development Agency, as part of the Leadership Development Program at Canadian telecommunications company, TELUS, and as an undergraduate from the University of Toronto in Human Biology. The combination of exposure to global health, business, mobile technology, and social enterprise has resulted in interests in using market mechanisms and technology to overcome global poverty.

Kayleigh Platz (University of Waterloo) 
The Usabilty of Culture

• I want to encourage discussion about the different platforms for research that are needed to understand how people are using applications and technologies (such as Twitter) in ways to connect and create value and culture, and how they are creating a need through their use and not by the use of the technology.
• Kayleigh Platz is the Technical Solutions Provider at the University of Waterloo. Kayleigh’s interests range from on-line communication and social networks, the cyberworld culture, the ethnography of design, tactical media, and Harry Potter. Kayleigh received her MA in Public Issues Anthropology from the University of Waterloo.