Technology development
Developing technological tools for social impact is at the heart of a lot of IDEMS work. Below is a list of key projects which illustrate the breadth and depth of our work using a wide range of technologies. We are guided by the needs of a project in choosing which technologies to work with and hence find ourselves using a wide range of tools and languages.
As we grow we are building our own suite of open tools which we intend to make the core of an approach to build evidence-based digital ecosystems that serve specific communities with technological tools to make a positive social impact.
R-Instat
The African Data Initiative instigated R-Instat as a front end to the popular statistics language R, conceived to fill a gap they had identified. However its development has highlighted how much more statistical software could do to meet current data analytic needs and it is now positioned to evolve into a suite of tailored tools.
The Parenting for Lifelong Health(PLH) digital ecosystem
Digital initiatives have the potential to support the scaling of social interventions, but that potential is rarely achieved due to complications posed in implementation and deployment. We understand these complications well and are working with the PLH team to build a coherent ecosystem of digital tools for implementation partners to customise.
ParentApp
IDEMS has been supporting the PLH core team to develop a smart phone app based on the Parenting for Lifelong Health teenage programme content. Initially designed for offline low-end android devices in the hands of a digital immigrant, with varying level of support offered by by a variety of implementing partners. It has proved an engaging technical challenge to accommodate the diverse partner requirements.
ParentText
Many parents embrace social media as part of their daily lives, ParentText is designed to support them with evidence based parenting tips. It is a chatbot, with integrated timed and responsive interactions that can be locally customised without losing connection to the evidence based central content.
Internet of Good Things (IoGT)
IoGT is a collection of UNICEF country office managed websites which aims to support the needs of youth and first time internet users. IDEMS has particularly enjoyed being challenged in the redevelopment process by a number of the unusual specification requirements. One of the most interesting has been need to prioritise feature phone users while also enabling offline access for smart phones.
Virtual Maths Camp
The technical challenge of creating solutions that combine the physical, human and digital is exactly the sort of thing that gets the IDEMS team interested. The virtual maths camp has been one of the projects that pushes our thinking forward.
Open CDMS and Climsoft
We entered this area through our expertise in developing tools to support the analysis of historical climatic data. However as part of our work supporting Meteorological services and agencies across the world we regularly need to go back to the original data records for conformation and quality control. As such contributing to open tools for climate data management is natural to ensure smooth data pipelines and processes, from collection through to dissemination.
