Congratulations to mPedigree, entrant in USAID's Development 2.0 Challenge, and 2009 Tech Laureate, as announced by the Tech Awards today! Tech Awards reports that this year's 15 laureates were selected from among 650 nominations representing 66 countries.

Mobile Commons  - “The new text-messaging service powered by Mobile Commons... is part of an emerging wave of technology that allows consumers to get instant... information through their cell phones.” – Wall Street Journal

Souktel is a cell-phone-based service available in the Middle East that uses SMS technology to help young people find jobs and help people in need to access emergency aid.  Souktel's services include: JobMatch, which matches jobseekers with jobs and internships; AidLink Alerts, which allows aid agencies to disseminate information cost-e

2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge submissions

GLOBAL HEALTH

III

Entries 27-38

2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge submissions

HEALTH II

Entries 21-38

21) Mobile phone messages for HIV Prevention for the deaf

22) Mobilizing Medical Records in Resource Poor Settings

What:  This project will build a modular flood early warning application, which will push SMS messages to people downstream of a flood event in real time.

What:  This project will implement a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. This tool will give women a way to anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment as soon as they happen, using a simple text message from their mobile phone.

Every day, many of the rural poor in the developing world suffer from undiagnosed, yet treatable, health problems. This is largely due to a short supply of adequately trained healthcare professionals, sporadically located health facilities, and unevenly allocated government and NGO health resources.

The concept behind Question Box is simple.  It's an all questions answered service where people call or SMS a given number with a question about anything, speaking in their local language.  Using a pre-populated database and the Internet, Operators look up the answers to the users' questions and answer them, translating if necessary.  The service works for any type of information

3 billion people have little access to life-saving or valuable information. Organizations serving these communities do not have simple, cost-effective tools to enable reliable and meaningful dialog to increase their reach while scaling their impact.