Characterizing the transport behaviour of the short message service
Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services
FoneAstra: making mobile phones smarter
Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions
Smart Connect: last mile data connectivity for rural health facilities
Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions
Place lab: device positioning using radio beacons in the wild
PERVASIVE'05 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Pervasive Computing
A system for safe flash-heat pasteurization of human breast milk
NSDR '11 Proceedings of the 5th ACM workshop on Networked systems for developing regions
ODK tables: data organization and information services on a smartphone
NSDR '11 Proceedings of the 5th ACM workshop on Networked systems for developing regions
Tackling vehicular fraud in Ethiopia: from technology to business
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computing for Development
Software for national level vaccine cold chain management
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
Open data kit sensors: a sensor integration framework for android at the application-level
Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services
Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems
ODK tables: building easily customizable information applications on Android devices
Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Symposium on Computing for Development
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We present a low-cost, energy-efficient system to remotely monitor the temperature and location of vaccines in a countrywide "cold-chain". Our system is based on FoneAstra [11] -- a low-cost, microcontroller-based, programmable device that extends capabilities of low-tier mobile phones that are commonly used in developing countries. In the system discussed in this paper, FoneAstra is enhanced with a digital temperature sensor and integrated with a vaccine cold-box used to store vaccines in a temperature controlled environment. FoneAstra continuously monitors the temperature of the cold-box, aggregating readings over a period of time. It uses the mobile phone to which it is coupled to send periodic SMS messages with routine temperature reports or immediate alerts if it detects abnormal temperature conditions. Additionally, it enables location-tracking of vaccines in transit, based on the mobile phone's cell tower-IDs. We present results from an ongoing lab-deployment done at PATH [18], our Seattle-based partner NGO for this project. Over the next few months, we will deploy this temperature and location monitoring system for vaccine cold-chains in several countries in which PATH operates. The client in this system, which includes a temperature sensor, FoneAstra and a mobile phone, costs $50; while the server, which includes a Netbook and a GSM modem, costs $500. We discuss how our system can scale up to enable large-scale monitoring while incurring low overhead costs.