#PhD journey: preparing main study #MOOC

The next big step in my PhD journey is coming up: the main study. Once September comes, I will hopefully get massive amounts of data coming my way (well, lets say massive yet controllable data would be ideal, not BIG data, rather meaningful data in manageable abundance). Rolling out a main study is more difficult than organizing the pilot study for multiple reasons: personal knowledge (by knowing more, additional reflections come to mind when planning an follow-up), getting more people to agree that I come and gather a flock of research participants, making sure all questions will lead to meaningful research...

My previous steps during my PhD journey were:

• writing a probation report (which included my pilot study set up, some literature and rationales for the research choices I made at that point in time)
• considering the pilot study data analysis and filtering out key findings (e.g.what influences MOOC learning, what is of importance for learning what is not, is there a difference in learning depending on online learning experience...) that were of use to my upcoming main study (I will put these into a more legible document in the upcoming weeks)
• rewriting my central research question and following sub-questions
• building my research instruments (which in my case are questions I will ask the research participants: keeping learning logs, engaging in interviews)
• and of course, very important for a PhD: rationales for each step. 

Research focus

For my research I look at experienced online learners (adults in most cases), and how they self-determine their learning (this links to heutagogy, I wrote briefly about the why of this approach in an earlier post here). There are multiple reasons why I like this: relevance to lifelong learning, adult learners can be more self-determined due to their own experience or professional/personal needs, it is advanced learn-to-learn combining personal goals with digital skills with a mediation linked to critical thinking (which content do I find of interest, of all the discussions I am engaged in - who do I learn from, which argument do I feel is more to my liking...). This emphasis on experienced (adult) online learners immediately opens up the MOOC space for me, it brings it back to its first roll-outs (cfr. CCK2008) and it relates to what young as well as adult learners do in terms of 'internet use for learning': you want to find a solution for something, you connect through the internet (tools, objects, people), you surf the net, you connect with others, you make curate in your mind what is useful, and assemble the information into new knowledge (well, that is how I think it goes, but a lot needs to be investigated). An adult learner makes decisions for their learning, they make their own decisions based on their own expertise (I assume here): we all have our own agenda's, and as such we need different bits of information (chosen drops from the Internet fountain or our own networks). Of course in this learning chaos, there might also be emergent learning happening, no matter how experienced one is as a learner, and this is of course also of interest (how does it work, might it become integrated in durable learning...).

So my central research question is: "How do experienced online learners manage self-determined learning when engaged in a MOOC in order to attain their learning objectives?"

Research environment

In order to investigate this, I was looking for research participants that would be engaged in MOOCs that would attract or support that type of learning. And I wanted MOOCs that had different feels to it as well, or could attract different populations that would (possibly, hopefully). I was also looking for MOOCs that would take more than two weeks, as research shows that there is an interesting chasm in interaction between week 2 and 3 of a MOOC. And as I am part of The Open University and its partners, I have the pleasure of being able to ask MOOC organizers from different universities that are all part of FutureLearn  to see whether I have their permission to gather research participants from their MOOCs. 

The world of academics is amazing, as I got three agreements of the lead facilitators of each MOOC I was interested in (SO GRATEFUL!). I gladly share the three MOOCs here:

The Science of Medicines: learn the science behind how and why medicines work, and what can improve the patient treatment experience. This MOOC is organized by Monash University in Australia, and lead by Ian Larson. The Monash University is a leading university for pharmacy and health courses, and I really look forward to the course. I choose this course as it was health related: building on past experiences I would think a lot of health professionals might be interested in this course as it might provide extra insight into medicines and pharmacy. The course also provides support for carers and people with diseases mentioned in the course. This is an additional bonus, as my pilot study showed that health issues can be a reason to follow a MOOC. And I am a diabetic type 1 (= insuline dependent, so interested in that health part as well). 

The course starts 1 September 2014, and lasts for 6 weeks, with a 4 hourse pw study time. 

Decision Making in a Complex and Uncertain World is my second MOOC of interest. This course will teach us the first principles of complexity, uncertainty and how to make decisions in a complex world. It is organized by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Lex Hoogduin is the course lead. The reason for choosing this MOOC to look for research volunteers was based on its content related to complexity. For MOOC learning, and especially experienced online learning has a lot to do with dealing with complexity. As such, I thought it would be interesting, and I hope to see some parallels coming out of the content, and the learning reflections. 

The course starts 15 September 2014, lasts for 6 weeks, and has quite a hefty 6 hours per week study workload (which is of interest as well, as high expectations sometimes provides high effort return). 

Basic science: understanding experiments is a hands-on course which introduces its participants to science-based skills through simple and exciting physics, chemistry and biology experiments. It is organized by The Open University, and lead by Hazel Rymer. This MOOC offers a different learning set-up: it is more practical, as course participants are asked to try out experiments in their own home (one of which is: getting DNA !). So this might ask different learning to occur. 

The course starts on 22 September 2014, lasts for 4 weeks, and has an estimated study workload of 3 hours per week. 

Excited by the prospect of getting people on board for this research... so will post as the next steps are ready. 

#mHealth opportunities and planning using #mLearning

mHealth is a rapidly growing market. The interesting thing is that it actually reaches both patients and practitioners around the globe with all the people around the world using cell phones. Because of the wide variety of options that are out there, I wrote an article for always inspirational Learning Solutions magazine which is the eLearning Guild publication. The mHealth article is entitled Mobile Learning Support for Global Health.

In the article I look at the requirements to get an mHealth project started, what it takes to plan a health related project (e.g. secure data handling) and get it implemented (strategic plan, mobile content mix,...) and I look at opportunities for mHealth applications (e.g. education awareness, early warning systems for epidemic outbreaks, personal well-being...)°

With the world getting smaller by the day, mHealth is a sound and human region of eLearning to get into. And for all of us who have experience in mobile instructional design... this is a great area to explore or expand. There are also links to some free articles and papers related to mHealth for additional inspiration.  

And if you are in the neighborhood of San Jose, California, there is a wonderful mobile learning conference planned in 18 - 19 June, the mLearnCon organized by the eLearning Guild. I have been there in the past and it is a real treat, because in just 2 days you will get immersed in all things mLearning and ready to take control of a new mLearning project. 

Free #research papers on #mLearning from mLearn conference

Today the free proceedings of the mLearn2012 conference that was organized in Helsinki were put online. For all that want to get a peek into recent research, it is a blast! The topics are very diverse: augmented learning, health (diabetes 1 support among others), gender, learning analytics, mLearning pedagogy, language learning, learning with tablets ...
If interested you can download the full proceedings here (pdf) or you can simply scan the titles and pick those you are interested in. I will only list the full papers here, but there are also a number of posters, short papers, showcases and doctoral interests giving an update on research in the making which  you can view online here.

List of full paper topics:

• Mobile-Enabled Language Learning Eco-System 1-8
  Agnieszka Palalas
• Mobile Assisted Language Learning: A Literature Review 9-16
  Olga Viberg, Åke Grönlund
• Evaluating ThinknLearn: A Mobile Science Inquiry Based Learning Application in Practice 17-24
  Sohaib Ahmed, David Parsons
• iSpot Mobile A Natural History Participatory Science Application 25-33
  Will Woods, Eileen Scanlon
• Information Ecologies A Useful Approach for Observing Mobile Learning in the Wild? 34-37
  Nicola Beddall-Hill
• The CLAS App - A Mobile Solution to Improve Handover Procedures between Hospital Interface and General Practitioner 38-45
  Bridget Maher, Hendrik Drachsler, Marco Kalz, Marcus Specht
• Global MedAid Evolution of an mlearning App for International Work-based Learners 46-53
  Jo Colley, Claire Bradley, Geoff Stead, Jessica Wakelin
• Designing Mobile Applications to Support Type 1 Diabetes Education 54-61
  Andy Pulman, Jacqui Taylor, Kate Galvin, Mike Masding
• Augmented Reality and Mobile Learning: the State of the Art 62-69
  Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Anne Adams, Rebecca Ferguson, Mark Gaved, Yishay Mor, Rhodri Thomas
• Learning Analytics in Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning Environments 70-77
  Naif Aljohani, Hugh C Davis
• mLearning Towards Open Formats 78-85
  Geoff Stead
• Everyday Patterns in Lifelong Learners to Build Personal Learning Ecologies 86-93
  Bernardo Tabuenca, Stefaan Ternier, Marcus Specht
• A Gender Digital Divide? Women Learning English through ICTs in Bangladesh 94-100
  Alexandra Tyers
• Low Cost Mobile Phones for Large Scale Teacher Professional Development in Bangladesh 101-108
  Christopher Walsh, Robina Shaheen, Tom Power, Claire Hedges, Masuda Khatoon
• MobiDics - Cooperative Mobile E-Learning for Teachers 109-116
  Andreas Möller, Barbara Beege, Stefan Diewald, Luis Roalter, Matthias Kranz
• The Pedagogy of Mobile Learning In Supporting Distance Learners 117-125
  Mpine Makoe
• Zapp: Learning about the Distant Landscape 126-133
  Mike Sharples, Sam Meek, Gary Priestnall
• Mobile Learning and Health-Risk Management of Pulsed Microwave Technologies 134-139
  Mikko Ahonen, Tarmo Koppel
• An Analysis of the Educational Potential of Augmented Reality Games for Learning 140-147
  Birgit Schmitz, Marcus Specht, Roland Klemke
• The Use of Quick Response Codes in the Classroom 148-155
  Jenni Rikala, Marja Kankaanranta
• Heutagogial Approaches to mlearning: from Student- generated Content to International Co-production 156-163
  Thomas Cochrane, Laurent Antonczak, Daniel Wagner
• A Three-level Evaluation Framework For a Systematic Review of Contextual Mobile Learning 164-171
  Yu Wei, Hyo-Jeong So
• Tablets with Restricted Mobility: Investigating User Acceptance in a South African Mathematics Mobile Learning Project 172-179
  Thanel Voigt, Machdel Matthee

#mHealth projects and examples from David Metcalf

David Metcalf has a longstanding expertise in mobile projects. In the last years he has been involved in mobile health projects varying from nutrition to full-blown medical simulations. In this recorded seminar he shares some of his expertise on mHealth.

He also lists some key ideas of mhealth:
Develop once, deliver many
    Messaging versus applications versus Web: an integrated approach
mLearning is bigger than any single country or region
    'project M' - 1 billion people served on changing attitudes on HIV
    micro-financing options connected to mhealth initiatives (connecting mobiles to pico-projectors)
mLearning integrated
    bluetooth connections for glucose monitors (ability to build a social connectivist peer group support, what happens if knowledge comes together like siri, or other semantic knowledge )
    digital pens to scribe medical reports (captures audio and written notes)
    mobile 3D-scanner to get an idea of someone's medical condition
     Watson voice-based AI expert mentor (look up YouTube)
Location-based GPS everywhere (also indoor): as you walk through the clinic, you get the appropriate content related to that room, e.g. operating room, with surgery checklist application...
    4G and 3D
    giving improved learner outcomes for future doctors, and in other fields.
Mobile augmented reality for health
    launch 3D visual content so you can follow or learn a medical procedure

And he launches a call to develop our common mobile talent pool
    we need more people entering the mLearning talent pool: developers, UCF mobile makers club, need for partnerships...   


With examples from the health sector and some emergency mlearning examples and some challenges.This webinar is part of MobiMOOC, the free, open, online course on mLearning (http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com)

Does #mobile learning really make a difference in this world?

Years ago I met Devaji Patil in Bangalore, India and … I related to his spirit and wisdom. Devaji is a philosopher at heart and a medical doctor by profession. In his new job he wants to set up mobile health projects, but at the same time he wants to make sure they will be durable and basically… make sense to the people it is designed to help. So he challenged me with some tough questions comprising ethics, meaningfulness, gender challenges and effectiveness of learning with mobiles. I could get some thoughts in, but I feel many more people are needed to answer his questions in full, so feel free to add ideas or send Devaji additional answers.

1. how are we sure that mobile learning is really empowering

For ages people, both philosophers and lay-people, have been discussing the empowerment of learning or education in general. Looking at the Millennium goals, I can see that most of us still believe in it, but even the most basic primary education is not reached yet. I think this is due to lack of durable, educational vision. Any learning, including mLearning will only be empowering if it is made accessible to all, inspiring, comprehensible, participative as well as collaborative, with guidance for those learners that feel the need to have a guide-on-the-side and most of all durable within a flexible learning environment. Looking at teachers that are real corner stones of education, they know how to appeal to their learners, lift their spirits, inspire them to reach their full potential. That type of teacher is creative, knows how to reach his/her learners and find the strength within the learner. This being said, I feel that every learning is based on inspirational, creative people with vision and trust in the future of their learners. As such I am sure Devaji that if you set up mLearning courses, they will be empowering.  

2. how to actually negotiate the barrier of technology to an 'illiterate' health worker?

The best way to negotiate the barrier is by using what they use, or trying to reimagine new technology with how they use old or known technology. It is not necessary to read if you have a phone, in that case speech can be enough to exchange knowledge/information. So basic cell-phones can be used as help-lines, where patients phone in, and health workers phone back.

If the spoken feedback of the health care workers are than added to a data-base after ‘speech to text’ software, this database can be used for future cases. At the same time radio transmissions offer a great, non-reading, durable way of getting knowledge (continued medical education) distributed to large crowds in a less expensive way, and radio is a mobile device. A case study using radio for this reason (in Philippines for rural farmer women) is linked here (http://www.tistr.or.th/RAP/publication/1999/1999_08_rome.pdf ). What strikes me is that funding is much more difficult to get for this type of proven, mobile learning than small scale smartphone projects (but that is another discussion).

3. with rapidly changing technology ... what is happening to pedagogy? Does pedagogy change too ? As fast as technology ?

Good pedagogy stands apart from technology, but technology can be used to get good pedagogy out to the masses and via distance education (reaching the difficult to reach, in every sense of the word). I feel that pedagogy is very human, and as humans only change slowly, good pedagogy will also only adapt to the pace in which humans can reach their own bigger potential. However with the evolution of technology, the variety of teaching/learning that can be reached via distance education does evolve more rapidly than before: which means that more people can be reached based on the same concepts of good pedagogy (e.g. participation between rural health care workers is now possible by using simple cell-phones).

4. Are we in a position to make 'learning' a central theme of Health systems strengthening if we are then where is it being seen if not why not ?

The knowledge and application of durable and scalable mLearning is still in its early beginnings. In just a couple of years’ time mLearning starts to take off. This means that a lot of projects did not take off due to lack of knowledge about all the factors impacting a project or target population, other projects do take off but are sometimes stopped due to non-durable options… And sadly those projects not attaining what they were meant to obtain are rarely disseminated, although most of us are eager to learn from mistakes to ensure successful future endeavors.

To me learning or training should be at the center of any system, including health systems. The concept of Lifelong Learning did not come out of the blue, but came out of an awareness that constant education will be a must in a world where changes happen increasingly rapid.  

A stable, durable health system will have learning and specifically continued medical education embedded in its core, for without keeping health care workers, health managers… up to date on latest changes, the patients will not be reached with optimal health care. In relation to this, I share this National Health Service (United Kingdom) paper focusing on 29 recommendations for embedding mLearning in their health care system http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.be/2011/04/how-can-health-within-clinics-be.html these recommendations do not always apply to more challenged regions, but some of them can indeed be implemented.

5 Why is human interface still important. ?

For trust, real understanding, and for reaching those that need some time to voice the problems they are facing, and to reach those that feel insecure or unable to share text.

6. How to / Why / Where/ When to place technology enhanced learning in health systems that are not just weak ... but actually in a disintegrated state?

That is something else, if a system is in a disintegrated state it needs to be rebuild from the ground up I guess. In that case technology might be used to start communicating about most urgent issues but … if a basis is unstable, you can be sure that any rapidly designed technological addition will only amount to even more disruption.

7. Is technology gender sensitive ? Technology is definitely gender sensitive. It has the old stigma (male’s are better at it), the new social-economic realities (women have less access to technology) and the gender digital divide. There are exceptions, but it is an uphill battle to get women on an equal opportunity base regarding technology or its related solutions. To that topic I refer to GSMA’s woman mobile initiative: http://www.mwomen.org   

These types of subjects will be covered and discussed during MobiMOOC in week 2 by John Traxler and week 3 by Michael Sean Gallagher, so feel free to join the discussions. Looking at the participants I am sure they will be able to add much more solutions and ideas than I can. 

5 steps to improve my #mobile #diabetic life

Since March 2011 I am a diabetic type 1. This means that my pancreas is no longer functioning and I have to take 4 insuline shots per day (Novorapid and Lantus (glargine)).

In the past 6 month I have bought a Continued Glucose Monitor (CGM) produced by Medtronic. The CGM enables me to keep an almost real-time overview of the glucose in my blood. This is great for me, as I have a various activities (so glucose use varies) and I have a small child (now 1 year old) which makes me more aware of my child his safety. I use the CGM without an insulin pump, so I just use the monitor to keep me informed on possible hypoglycemics (low blood sugar with a risk of getting in coma when too low).

The CGM has greatly improved my ease of mind. But, as a mobile learning adapt, I feel the CGM could be improved with some simple technical and training modifications. So this blogpost is in a way a call for action from Medtronic and all CGM building companies. And the model can in itself be used as a generic mobile health (mHealth) model. How, easy in 5 steps

1. The CGM is currently sending glucose information to a Medtronic monitor, but it would be an improvement if it would send information to a smartphone (BYOD type of development). Security might be an issue, but the CGM monitor has been hacked also, so well. Getting your blood sample info to an iPhone is already possible (see movie below), so getting CGM info to my/any smartphone is feasible.
2. Now add to this a carbohydrate smart scale that is connected to my smartphone or other mobile device (e.g. the wireless scale in combination with iPad/iPhone). This does require a scale that has options to choose from: buttons for different carbohydrate foods and fruits to allow the scale to immediately convert the weight into the right amount of carbohydrates. This way, the mobile device can calculate the amount of insulin you will need and add the meal information to a offline/online synchronized personal database. 
3. When the CGM sends encrypted information to a smartphone as mentioned above, additional health applications can be build. For instance one that keeps you up to date on how your glucose is changing throughout the day in relation to your food intake. For instance, which foods allow you to do a more strenuous workout, or are better at keeping your glucose stable when doing nothing (airplane, daylong meeting,etc). For this an algorithm must be build that monitors different variables and can indicate what type of food gave good results overtime (in my case brown pasta is always giving me problems, so I would love to know if it is linked to anything else). Of course there are many diabetes related apps out there already: Android based, iPhone based, other, or check out this one EndoGoddess which seems to give points for putting in your diabetes info an in exchange you can download iTunes music - interesting business support model. But these apps miss the personalized, more semantic type of algorithm.
4. Add to this a training application to inform diabetic newbies: YouTube movies, cause and effect information, food advice, workout advice (e.g. eating olives and avocado's helps in increasing good cholesterol levels because they influence the take in of bad cholesterol in favor of the good one). 
5. And finally, provide a newsletter URL or RSS feed that is mobile enabled. It is easy and promotes all that deliver information, so win-win situation.

So how would this improve my mobile diabetic life?

• It saves time in putting the information of weighing food into any paper notebook or smartphone app, because the scale is connected to the smartphone.
• I can work with the device I like to use and am comfortable with
• It saves time in calculating, as the smartphone can immediately calculate how much insuline you need for the amount of carbohydrates you have weight in relationship to the time of day.
• And it saves quality time as I learn continuously (or when I am willing). 

So if any of you Medtronic managers/developers would be interested, I will gladly share my ideas/tech knowledge to get this realized (no fee, just fly me to your headquarters and let the meeting begin).

For sure Medtronic is amazing at leading research to a fully closed, artificial pancreas. See for instance their latest news on the path towards an artificial pancreas in their newsroom article here.

Thanks to Domingo Liotta I am also a bit at ease about my night insulin that is glargine  (which has said to increase the cancer risk), but now three new study is out indicating that glargine would not increase the cancer risk (let's hope so, for long-term studies are still running).

And last but not least the linkup between blood level updates and iPhone.

#mHealth a #diabetes #mobile project in DRCongo, Cambodia and the Philippines

Most of us want to make some kind of difference, making the world a better place. Josefien Van Olmen is one of these wonderful researchers at ITM that gets it done. A few months back she asked me to get involved in a diabetes project which would involve basic cell-phones. We all got our heads together (doctors, social scientists and technologists) and set up a really cool and easy to build and implement diabetes project. For those interested a quick overview of how it was set up:

Josefien drew up the medical side of things, taken into account national differences, regional challenges, medical ethics, etcetera. She is a very intelligent expert researcher and she drives her people hard but with an incredible warmth of heart. Will not link to any medical framework here, as this is part of Josefien’s work, but feel free to contact her if you want to learn more about it: Josefien’s LinkedIn page can be found here.

Needs going into the project:

• Getting in touch with diabetes people (diabetes 1 and 2) who are living in remote areas or who have a hard time getting to their health clinics/health care workers/diabetes educators.
• Keep the diabetes project at low cost,
• Make use of the personal cell phones the diabetes patients have (cheap cell phones, mostly java enabled) to make them feel comfortable with the technology of the program.
• Make it generic so other organizations in the country (or elsewhere) would be able to reproduce it for their own purposes,
• Get people empowered to use their cell phone for practical life changing/enhancing topics.
• Make the program strong and durable by providing patient records
• Keep the program easy to use, so health care workers as well as users will be kept motivated to use it even in difficult times.
• Allow the content and communications to be written or performed in different languages (French, Khmer, …).
• Keep control of the program and the health messages.
• Easily build health messages to send around in bulk.

Solution:

• First of all working closely with the diabetes managers in the countries: they know their patients, the challenges for their specific regions. Getting a participative project going from the start.
• Finding a low cost (free and open source!) solution that works with basic cell phones, offers the option to build your own reports/forms, and allows all the communication that is happening between the patients, the health care workers and the diabetes managers to be put into long lasting and transparent patient records => one solution the Frontline SMS medic solution.
• Testing the program: the most difficult part was finding the right modem to get frontline sms to work properly (we used a Huawei gsm modem in the end, after trying quite some other types of gsm modems).
• Getting a frontlinesms expert in to fine tune to the program’s needs. Limbanazo Kapindula was/is the man of the moment. He just finished a mHealth project in Malawi (blogpost and his presentation on the project can be found here).

Some resources
If you are interested in testing out the frontlinesms medic for your own purposes, feel free to download the frontlineSMS medic program here or check out this video and start your own project yourself or with your team.



This diabetes program is now being set up right now and will be ready for roll-out in the very near future. Josefien, you sure know how to make a difference. I know how important it is to get connected to my fellow diabetics and health care workers, thank you for your great work and the opportunity to work with you!

#ICT4d Using #mHealth to improve access to family planning and child health services in #Malawi by Limbanazo Kapindula

Limbanazo Kapindula (Twitter: @Limkapin) has come to ITM to help us out in setting up a mobile diabetic project (will report on this later) in Cambodia, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He comes all the way from Malawi where he was involved in three 5 year projects with Management Sciences for Health, they all came to an end in September 2011 (5 year projects). This is a short synopsis of his presentation.

Limbanazo is an IT expert, and he gave the mobile phone training to people who had never used mobile phones before.

Challenges in Malawi

Challenging infant mortality rates (69/1000 children die in the first year) and only 40% of women in Malawi had access to family planning services.

So how can the access to care be increased? How can community workers be helped?

Targeted people:

Health surveillance agents,

Community based distribution agents providing oral contraceptives HIV/AIDS.

13 of the 28 Malawi districts were targeted.

Innovation: community health care using mobile technology

Use of simple mobile phones for electronic reporting and other important communication

To help 2000 CHW (Community Health Workers) what was needed was:

Report in timely way

Get support during emergencies

Request and receive remote technical support

Refer clients/patients for secondary care

Key issues to make it successful

Training to all the users

Technical support to all

Involve the stakeholders (telecom, ministry of health…)

Planning the backup (data backup for future support).

How this mHealth project was set-up

A network between central computers that are connected via USB modems for data transfer, connected with Frontline Medic sms (enables bulk message interactions between a central location and people across any region, setting up forms, connect to patient database).

It was a simple application, so simple that it could be learned from a manual. It took three months to fit the project to the scientific demands of the researchers (java reader, specified forms), but the actual use was really easy thanks to this pre-project input, nevertheless there were some people who simply were not able to cope with the technology and they dropped out due to the pressure to keep reporting (those were mainly part of the community based distribution agents, which are volunteers).

Over 12000 text messages captured using the system within 8 months (WAW!!!).

50% of the messages was on technical information, 35% on patient reports (this division was connected to the startup of the project, dialogues between health care workers). These distinctions in the mobile communication could be recorded because they used keywords for specific communications.

Cost was a main concern for the government, after taking into account all the data, the project showed that with only 10 cents a child’s life could be saved.

If you are interested in setting up a mobile project in any region that is based on simple phones, contact Limbanazo who has all this expertise. Or take a look at the program that was used and check it out yourself.

Help us #save new born babies lives by using #mobile devices for #ultrasound

"Why not save the lives of new borns by making use of mobile devices that can be used for ultra-sound?" with this simple idea my wonderful and inspiring colleagues Vincent De Brouwere and Fabienne Richard started a quest to get a new mobile project up and running.

The project is now before a jury and it would be wonderful if as many people as possible could vote in favor of this proposal, as it will really save lives of new born babies and their mothers.

If we get enough votes, the project will be funded by the Belinda and Bill Gates foundation. Please feel free to support us by voting on the project (here is the link to the voting option), Remark: you must register here first (for free) to be able to vote, it only takes a moment and I think they do it to make sure the voters are 'real' people. You vote by first registering for an account, than signing in and clicking on the 'star' next to the project of your choice. Thanks in advance!

This is what the project is all about:

Title of the project: UltraSound4Africa
Organization:Institute of Tropical Medicine - Antwerp

Organization Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Optimal care during childbirth in rural areas of most low and middle income countries is hampered by 2 major problems: the limited equipment and capacity of health workers for diagnosis, and the quasi-absence of back-up from the hospital, which impacts on their motivation and competence. In order to improve the technical quality of care and the motivation of primary care maternity staff working in rural areas of low-income countries, the Ultrasound4Africa project proposes to develop a two-pronged integrated intervention:

• the provision of low cost smartphone-based ultrasound imaging systems (MobiUS device) that connect rural maternities with specialists. This telemedicine intervention aims at early diagnosis of life threatening obstetric complications, appropriate case management and rapid referral of critical cases to the hospital.
• The development of a network of primary care maternities with their referral hospitals, aiming at providing technical and moral support to health workers working in remote areas.

The pilot test will be implemented in rural maternities of 2 districts in Burkina Faso and Mali where access to Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) remains low despite a national policy of abolition of user fees for EmOC. This intervention is expected to improve utilization of antenatal care and skilled birth attendance by increasing women’s trust in primary care services and to contribute to reducing maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. Ultrasound4Africa will be implemented by national teams at district level and supported by a multidisciplinary team (clinicians, public health specialists and IT specialists) with an extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa.

Looking for #online course tutor/developer in Belgium: send your resume and join the #eLearning team

At ITM we are looking for an online course tutor and developer to tutor a course called eSCART and collaboratively built future online courses as well. Feel free to forward this link to anyone you think might be interested or send your resumé and join our team!

The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerpen, Belgium is looking for an online course tutor/developer to start working at the department of Clinical Sciences, in the Unit Infectious Diseases. Th e Department of Clinical Sciences concentrates on patient-based research, training and services, with emphasis on tropical and infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis in developing countries. Thee Unit Infectious Diseases is organizing di fferent courses some of which are developed as e-learning courses. The latter are organized with experts from the North and the South, including former students from ITM. A position has opened for a course organizer to manage the interactions between all stakeholders.

What will be your assignment? You will...
• be responsible for the guidance of the students during the online courses.
• be responsible for the coordination of the educational tasks of the experts.
• develop Standard Operating Procedure's (SOPs) for the online courses for the purpose of quality assurance.
• actively contribute to the content of the courses.
• design short online modules for continuing medical education.
• organize blended learning with institutions in the South.
• participate in the Community of Practice of the alumni of the ITM.

The profile we are looking for (please rest assured that even if you have some of these qualities, we will consider your resumé in detail)
• You are a medical doctor or you have a master’s degree in a medical field.
• You have high level computer skills and experience with web-based and mobile communication techniques.
• You have excellent communication and teamwork skills.
• You speak and write fluently English and French; knowledge of Dutch is an asset.
• You have experience with training and you are familiar with e-learning tools.
• You have working experience in low resource settings.
• You are willing to live in Belgium.

What do we offer?
• An intellectually stimulating, international and socially committed environment, in which personal initiative can be developed.
• A full-time position for 2 years (renewable), starting date as soon as possible.
• A salary set according to the pay scales of the ITM and the Flemish universities, depending on relevant experience and level of education.
• Reimbursement of public transport costs, bicycle allowance, private pension scheme (after two years) and luncheon vouchers.

Interested?
For further information on this vacancy please contact Dr. Maria Zolfo, (+32.3.247.63.64 or mzolfo@itg.be).
Send your CV together with your motivation letter to vacatures@itg.be and mention 'coming from Inge de Waard' in your letter.
Apply before August 15th, 2011.

Want to have a quick look at eSCART? Take a peek at this presentation which gives an overview on some course components, including the eSCART:

What to take into account when developing courses for low resource areas or developing countries

View more presentations from Inge Ignatia de Waard

Mobile Diabetic: new invention for painless blood glucose monitoring via smartphones

As I was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 a month ago, I have been reading up on some mobile solutions that are in the pipeline. So from time to time I will put in a diabetic post as it is related to health and mobile solutions.

Carlos Kiyan is one of my closest colleagues and friends. Carlos pointed me in the direction of the painless GlucoReader that monitors blood glucose levels via micro-needles (which have been tested for the flue before). Painless glucose monitoring immediately got my attention, as the glucose finger stick pricking is PAINFUL and a bit difficult to do depending on the situation (one should not do it while driving a car!).

Four engineering students got their heads together and came up with a start-up company that would allow diabetics to monitor their glucose via a micro-needle patch which sends the blood glucose level to an android and/or iphone smartphone. The transmission is done via bluetooth, which is used for other diabetic innovations as well. The start-up is located in Boston, US.

The estimated price would be around 500 - 600 USD which is somewhat affordable (I would gladly donate one to someone I know on top of the one I would be using if it would decrease the finger-prick pain. It is a US invention, so not sure if it will be available outside of the US, but ... I would fly over and get it if I could. It is still in the R&D-phase, the engineering team has only started their trial period and it will still take a year before any FDA approval (Food and Drug Administration) could get the production going, but still ... it is worthwhile following. For easy following: follow them on twitter via @mobilifeinc

How can health within clinics be improved by mLearning? A research report with 29 recommendations

Full research reports sometimes stop me from really reading it in full, so I was very happy when the Epic newsletter dropped this summary research report on mLearning for NHS (UK's National Health Service, but also accessible for other countries health services) in my mailbox.

The report is relevant for everyone working in the health field or interested in setting up mobile learning for their companies as many of the recommendations can easily be translated to a different corporate field.

The report starts of with a nice overview on the benefits of mLearning (just-in-time, any place, context...) and moves on to show which type of mobiles are already in use at a specific NHS region (both looking at practitioners and managers). After having analyzed the possibilities of mLearning (both as a stand-alone, or for blended training use) the report delivers a great set of 29 recommendations to increase mLearning at NHS level, while taking into account the context and the contemporary mobile devices.

I gladly share 5 recommendations here:

1. Always undertake small-scale pilot studies that entail opportunities for users to give feedback on prototypes and engage in co-design;
2. Design all mobile learning and assessment with an offline capability;
3. Host a bi-annual m-Health symposium with key people working at the forefront of research and delivery of mobile health, and who attend mobile learning conferences across the world, to
4. ensure the NHS is able to exploit mobile learning to benefit staff professional development, both in current times and into the future.
5. A communications campaign is put in place to raise awareness among NHS staff and key stakeholders of the multitude of benefits to mobile learning.

Interested in Grand Challenges in Global Health in combination with Low Cost cellphones? Let me know

In the past (and present) the Grand Challenges in Global Health from the Gates foundation have given rise to a great set of interesting projects. Interesting for these funds are only dedicated to really WILD projects that have a global impact.

Next Friday, there will be a brainstorm at my institute on possible projects for this Grand Challenge, for this is the second time that a call is launched which is also linked to low-cost cellphone solutions. Most of the people in this first brainstorm will be physicians, so we will try and locate areas that are in dire need for a medical solution that involves the use of technology. The Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) where I work is a leading institute for HIV/AIDS and we are involved in many international projects, so medical expertise is assured.

In a second phase we will try and work out the WILD technological solution involving low-cost cellphones.

If any of you with expertise in mobile solutions are interested in getting into the technological brainstorming team (to jointly go for such a grand), let me know. We would love to get a collaboration going.

Topics for the call of Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 are:

• Design New Approaches to Cure HIV Infection;
• Create the Next Generation of Sanitation Technologies;
• The Poliovirus Endgame: Create Ways to Accelerate, Sustain and Monitor Eradication;
• Create Low-Cost Cell Phone-Based Applications for Priority Health Conditions;
• Create New Technologies to Improve the Health of Mothers and Newborns

Want to know more? Have a look at their website.

Mark Siegel: advancing learning in healthcare using mobile technology (mHealth) at mLearnCon

Rapidly talking gray haired man, focuses on the end user as the main stakeholder. Consultant working in Asia and Africa, his company: http://www.msasolutions.net/.

Great book to read: Checklist Manifesto book (http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0805091742) by Atul Gawande.
(Will post his slides once he sends them)

Liveblog notes:
Truly following a context model and knowing and bounding with your end user, to ensure you will get the context right, the more you will be successful. Use creativity.
Overarching message: do not try and reinvent the wheel, take what you used well and think about that in a context of mLearning.
smartphones pushes us to take a relook at learning (not training, real learning).
Many emerging regions is leapfrogging into a different learning ecosystem.

Promise of mHealth to advance learning
Partners in Health (www.pih.org) came right in, used the mobile technology they had already in place, and were able to build their infrastructure to build everything up (they did not need internet - it was down - but they could do everything online)
iPhone based IT infrastructure and android phones
providing patient records, medical triage, tracking volunteer staff, monitor warehouse supplies ....
Partners in Health is a self-contained unit.

What makes mobile so suitable for health purposes?
Great because you can integrate: mhealth, ehealth, telemedicine, CME - this is an option that never existed before.
Grounded in the audience, and system oriented.
Overall goal: behavior change leading to a healthier population.

Strategies
Get a complete working set-up, that is generic and scalable, sustainable.
Leveling the playing field of that knowledge in a non-hierarchical way, as you must be able to reach all the HCW in a sometimes challenging region.
Assure continuity!
sharing knowledge more efficiently.
Build generic processes.
Interesting in developing countries: much more mobile oriented (because of many, many, many money streams).
A major part of the budget goes to electronic patient records (US funding) and a lot of funding to adherence (follow-up medication...).
Mobile technology gets more and more interesting thanks to sensors.
Try to formalize the way learners are learning already: really grasp the way learning happens, with all its different features (which networks, which approach...)

some of the examples:
UN mobile health report: episurveyor: 2-way data exchange (http://www.episurveyor.org/user/index)
Frontline sms = open architecture: www.frontlinesms.com/
Commcare (tanzania):
Open Elis (reporting and reference) open architecture laboratory: http://openelis.uhl.uiowa.edu/?q=node/1 (very successful and picked up everywhere, started in Peru)
Nacera (Peru): remote communications between healthcare workers, to address maternal and childcare
Wireless data transmission: compact cell phone microscope to diagnose malraia in field settings: university of California.
Disease awareness and information: very big use of mobile technology. Speech recognition using mHealth to address literacy barriers: healthline in Pakistan: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~healthline/.
Communication and training: Amcom software platform (http://www.amcomsoftware.com/), i-tech global laboratory information system training. National school of nursing in Guatemala.

Framework Mark offered
needs and audience
learning information and communications programs
learning environment and organization
learning strategies and tools
development and delivery
learning system

social, cultural and audience considerations: solutions integral to people's lives, storytelling, peer to peer, ...

Mobile challenge from a diabetic project developed and implemented in Trinidad and Tobago region

In the workshop on Telemedicine in Tromso, Norway, a very lively and motivating speaker has challenged the mobile community, so feel free to think along and give possible references that could help her strengthen her fantastic doctoral research idea.

Her question in short: is there any research on best mobile design delivery that could benefit her mobile project on diabetes, so she can augment her mobile design as to better reach the users (diabetic patients) that are using mobile phones to monitor and keep track of their chronic diabetes health?
Does anyone know of research looking at mobile content design to improve mobile learning assimilation or outcomes? Feel free to drop me a line.

Link to her project: www.salys.org/research.html
Notes on her project (rough notes taken during her presentation of the project):

Mobile dsms: a mobile diabetes self-management system based on peer support by Salys Sultan
Type two diabetes is studied because it is a lifestyle disease
DSMS: which focuses on sustained support, but because it is too costly and time consuming for 1 on 1 patient doctor relation,

Why go for a mobile platform
Mobile phone is personal
Ubiquitous
Connected
Increasingly intelligent
Available anywhere and anytime
Push and pull model

This project came out of the medinet project (link to word document on the medinet project): carribean wide health project
Pilot study of Trinidad and Tobago islands
Bluetooth between blood pressure machine and sugar calculator machine and phone of the patiens
With feedback loop for the patients health
Every islands would have their own medinet architecture
Because of the age, a personal assistant was given to the patients to give support extra.

Peer based mobile DSMS
Heisler (2006) has shown that models that build on peer support have proven to be both successful and cost effective as they combine the traditional peer support.
Group services: contact members, post discussion forums, share results, arrange meetings (real life meetings)
Personal services: capturing observations of daily living 5ODL) readings, activity, food intake, location … and reviewing past results.

Research contributions
Social networking for health care
Health data visualization
Social aspects to motivate and sustain patient adherence
User interface design for the visual impaired


Expectations
To learn relevant techniques to ensure the design of the design of the patient interface services this suitable for motivating and sustaining patient adherence
To establish a plan of action/way forward for scaling the medinet project

www.salys.org/research.html

discussions will be put into categories for discussing
ante project: diverse feedback on mobile use of different age groups
keeping access under three clicks to get to needed information
privacy issues, you as a user says what you want to share

mobile systems used is the operational system of windows, this was done because of the Microsoft funding and giving software and phones.
Java phone option is also available.
The project started and was implemented completely from the Caribean region (great!)
Started with paper prototypes given to the users in order to build the DSMS software (which was build by S. Salys.

A bit more on the evaluation factors that they use in the peer-based mobile project:
Peer-based medical service for DSMS by S. Sultan
Each diabetic group: max 5, hoping sense of competition as well as community, amount of users: 25.

Main outcomes to measure: knowledge health status, system usage, social outcomes,
Did the users increase overall subject matter knowledge. Tool: diabetes knowledge questionnaire by America standard.
Is the phone a good tool for delivering health care

Health status: better self-management behavior, hopefully (with diabetes test to see how there overall health improve?
Result: is mobile tool as health care instrument effective in health

Social outcomes
Did you feel part of the group, activity logs, how much the group feature was used, analyse the logs to make sense of what we saw by qualitative surveys.

Overall objective: whether phone instruments can have a positive effect on health, effective health care instrument.

Algorithm on what effect the combination of the group has on the outcomes (is looking to build an algorithm to improve the outcomes, as part of her doctoral thesis – really interesting!!!)
The groups background was kept as simple as possible: limiting the groups to a similar knowledge of diabetes background (the users were taken from a known group of diabetes people, so they all had similar knowledge of diabetes and how to control it). As the users came from Trinidad and Tobago their economic and social background was almost similar.

Longterm view: ten years down the road.
The trial will depend on the funding available depending on the cost of the strips used in the diabetic analysis (always look at the completeness of the trial, to also include measurable effects: for instance 1 year for short outcomes, 2 year is ideal for getting research value also longterm). Currently it will be a 3 month test to look at possible effects.

The experimental design has come from literature review of existing diabetes/mobile projects.

Peer support as main topic: there are other diseases how telemedicine can be used for discussion forums 2 NST pHd’s working, one on breast cancer, and one on psychiatry and drug abuse). Maybe look at other chronic diseases?

If you study intervention, do NOT do anything else BUT the intervention.
AND if you plan a study take into account festival days (in case of diabetes), as there are 15 festivals in Trinidad Tobago region, and during these festivals everyone is really enjoying life 

Large gaps in mHealth: cost/benefits analysis and parameters suggested: usability, analyse major issues to include in the research using e.g. the physical systems that are already in place as informal observations moments, in the one on one environment an observer can look at the pick-up rate of the competencies (but most users prefer to start using the material once they are in their home, comfort zone). Health care is a private matter: people will change their behavior when they are observed, because of perceived expectations.

Design: text or text to switch (audio), but looking at mobile designs that could result in the best of outcomes.

Mobile Telemedicine: turn your camera equipped mobile phone into a microscope and heal the world

At the Institute of Tropical Medicine we focus on a lot of tropical diseases. In the quest to conquer those diseases there are a lot of hurdles to take and one is the lack of analyzing facilities in the field. Based on blood analysis it is easy to screen for a lot of the diseases (tuberculosis, malaria…). Now with the frequent and easy use of mobile phones throughout developing countries, a nifty little invention is bound to change this dramatically. While using the camera on a mobile phone, a holographic image can be made from the blood sample and be sent to any place where they can analyze the image of the blood sample. One of the dynamic mobile animal health researchers at ITM, Maxime Madder, gave me this tip.

So who is this person coming up with this new and affordable world relieving device? It is Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has formed a company, Microskia (no active website yet), to commercialize the technology.

How does it work? “In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.” (taken from the article the New York Times published on 7 November 2009).

If you want the more techy bit behind this invention, look at MIT technology review on young inventors.

All the people in the field need is software (to be purchased), training and 10$ worth of hardware. It is still in the prototype phase, but with all the good it can do, it ought to be out there soon enough.

So, is anyone out there interested to partner for a funding proposal? Let me know and we can sit together and make the world a bit healthier, thanks to Aydogan and his team.

(photo credit Christopher Harting)

#ela2009 thursday presentations: mobile learning for health care workers

Yesterday my esteemed colleague Carlos Kiyan gave the presentation on our mobile project in Lima, Peru.

As he is a very vivid speaker, it was fun to hear him present. He gave a holistic view of everything that comes into the equation if you want to start up a mobile learning project in an area that is not used to it.

Slides of the presentation:

mLearning Tibotec project presented at eLearning Africa in Dakar Senegal

View more OpenOffice presentations from ignatia.

Resource for mobile funding: mobile health projects overview from UN, Vodafone, Rockefeller Foundation

Thanks to the ever resourceful Adesina Iluyemi, an overview of mobile health projects came to me. If you are looking for funding in this area, this might be a good resource to get information and ideas from. If your projects builds on suggestions they give, your project might have more chances to be chosen.

This is a summary copied from HIFA 2015 mailing list.

The UN, Vodafone, and the Rockefeller Foundation's mHealth Alliance have launched a 'Mobile health' campaign, says a news item on the BBC website:

Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Barcelona - 17 February 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7893849.stm

The UN/Vodafone Foundation Partnership aims to unite existing projects to improve healthcare using mobile technology, and will 'guide governments, NGOs, and mobile firms on how they can save lives in the developing world'.

'The partnership is now calling for more members to help in mHealth initiatives..."The biggest problem is fragmentation of small projects," says Ms Thwaites [head of UN/Vodafone Foundation Partnership]. "A lot of the work being done on the ground is NGO- and foundation-led, but let's join those efforts with the Microsofts and the Qualcomms and the Intels and the Vodafones. There's a business case for it now; you have to have the experience of the NGOs on the ground talking to the big corporates out there and creating real business models, and that's why I think the mHealth Alliance can tackle that."'

The Partnership has published a 'groundbreaking' mHealth for Development report, which is available at:
http://www.bjhcim.co.uk/documents/mHealth_for_Development.pdf

The second half of the report contains descriptions of more than 50 projects ranging from eLearning, HMIS, telemedicine and patient-centric applications.

eSCART2008: an online course for low resource settings - the final report

Today I proudly post our (= ITM's) final report on the pilot course of our newly build full online course: eSCART2008.

I did write about the subject while the course was under construction, in that post I focused on the pre-survey we gave the learners.

For those interested, you can look at the the full report on the pilot in which you will find our modus of operandi, the changes we have made during the course, etcetera.

In a couple of weeks ITM starts another eLearning course for health care workers in the field specializing in ART (AntiRetroviral Therapy). The response for this course was overwhelming and we were booked immediately. This course was presented in a pilot phase (from IT perspective, the content is already full prove from years of experience but not in an eLearning fashion). We redesigned the face-2-face content so it meets eLearning Quality standards, but we also added specific eLearning features (more interactivity, (limited) social media). The coordinator of this medical eLearning course (and main tutor) is Verena Renggli she will go and work for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Basel beginning 2009 (she returns to her home country: Switzerland).

We started with a big learner group (over 40) because we wanted to make sure our finishing group would still be relevant... it turned out that 84% of the learners finished the complete course because they were so enthusiastic about the delivered material! We had learners from all over the world (the Tropical world): South-Africa, Myanmar, Cambodia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria... so that made it quite a unique experience as well. An institute is lucky if it has such strong learners.

The pilot phase of eSCART, offered over 3 months, was a full success. Although the course was offered for free, the retention rate was very high (84%) and the course was highly appreciated by the participants. Through offering the course content not only online but also on a CD Rom, problems with connectivity could be limited. The 22% increase in the average score of the posttest compared to the pretest reflects the increase in knowledge of the participants. It is interesting to see that the increase in the score of the pre- and posttest during the face-to-face SCART is similar to that of eSCART (19% increase).
To offer an eLearning course is very work intense. Not only the development and constant updating of the course content required a lot of time, but also the tutoring of the course. The presence of the course and expert tutors was shown to be of high importance for the ongoing learning process and motivation of the students. In future, the group of participants should be limited to a maximum of 25-30 participants per course to maintain a good communication between course and expert tutor and the participants.
However, it can be stated that not only the participants did learn during the course, but also the course and expert tutors, through all the postings (comments, questions and answers to questions of colleagues) in the DF by the participants.

I am proud to be working in such a great, creative and strong eLearning team.

Wireless power vision by Intel versus microwave health risks

It's a case of the optimist versus the pessimist view on life. During the latest Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, California, one of the topics in the visionary keynote was wireless power. Justine Rattner, Intel's vice president, demonstrated a Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL) to power a 60-watt light bulb without the use of a plug or wire of any kind, which is more than is needed for a typical laptop. For this technology Intel said they were using principles developed by MIT scientists developed by MIT scientists.

"WREL technology employs strongly coupled resonators, a principle similar to the way a trained singer can shatter a glass using her voice, Intel said. At the receiving resonator's natural frequency, energy is absorbed efficiently, just as a glass absorbs acoustic energy at its natural frequency. With this technology enabled in a laptop, for example, batteries could be recharged when the laptop gets within several feet of the transmit resonator, the company explained." as the TG-daily reported.

The optimist in me definitely agrees that 'The wireless power supplier will be a great invention! '

But than again the pessimist in me is quick enough to get me focused on possible dangers that need to be taken into account. What about the radiation of these wireless power solutions? I remember the great works of art Richard Box set-up using nothing more than stand-alone, non-connected light tubes, spread underneath high voltage transmission towers. The effect was amazing light without needing to connect the lights to an electricity plug (see the photo: 'shake pole by Richard Box). It is clear some radiation is filling the air surrounding these high voltage towers.

And while reading the article something else came to mind: is the radiation that is used in this future wireless power supply using the same frequency as microwaves and cell-phone radiation? If anybody knows this, feel free to fill me in.

Because if this is indeed the case, those radiated microwaves could effect human health. I know a lot of people put question marks on the research that is focusing on microwaves from cell-phones and the possible effects they can have on health, but I always try to be safe. If simple measures (hands free set, radiation free isolated homes...) can make sure I do not have to worry about whether these waves do have an effect, I simply apply these safe guidelines.

If you are interested in reading up on radiation from cell-phones and human health, feel free to have a look in the publication list of the computer science researcher Mikko Ahonen from the University of Tampere, Finland. Mikko Ahonen also has a great blog on open innovation, creativity and technology.

Why are the optimist and the pessimist seldomly agreeing on the same thing?

And thanks to great colleague Carlos Kiyan for getting me on to Intel's wireless power vision.