TY - GEN
T1 - Social services on wheels
T2 - 2014 IST-Africa Conference and Exhibition, IST-Africa 2014
AU - Kamau, Jecinta
AU - Reberio-Hargrave, Andrew
AU - Saito, Hiroaki
AU - Abdullah, Emran
AU - Okajima, Hiroshi
AU - Ahmed, Ashir
PY - 2014/1/1
Y1 - 2014/1/1
N2 - Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).
AB - Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84906751045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84906751045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880624
DO - 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880624
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84906751045
SN - 9781905824441
T3 - 2014 IST-Africa Conference and Exhibition, IST-Africa 2014
BT - 2014 IST-Africa Conference and Exhibition, IST-Africa 2014
PB - IEEE Computer Society
Y2 - 6 May 2014 through 9 May 2014
ER -