Exploiting Satellite Radio Technology to Create an African Satellite Health Education Infrastructure
- Paper number
IAC-06-E1.2.04
- Author
Dr. Phillip Olla, Madonna University, United States
- Year
2006
- Abstract
This presentation will illustrate how space technology is being used to provide health and educational material to underprivileged societies with minimal or no technical communication infrastructure. Space technology has great potential to deliver services to citizens in remote environments. Sustainable space infrastructure could offer very attractive opportunities for pursuing a broad range of public missions such as health and education initiatives in a cost-effective manner. This article will describe how an international consortium consisting of academic researchers, curriculum developers and private technology partners have collaborated to create a tele-health application called the African Satellite Health Education System (ASHES). This system will provide African teaching institutions the unique ability to disseminate health information to rural communities using the state-of-the-art health educational programs. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) delivery mechanisms will be used via satellite radio network infrastructure. The projects aims to deliver relevant and pertinent health information that will make an impact on health education in rural Africa communities. The space infrastructure provides live satellite broadcasting to deliver synchronous and asynchronous e-learning content to locations beyond the reach of telephone lines and postal delivery at an affordable cost. This project advocates three core competencies: technology, curriculum development, and sustainability. Technological Infrastructure. ASHES technology partner is WorldSpace Inc. Founded in 1990; the Washington-based WorldSpace operates the satellite called AfriStar, which serves all of Africa and the Middle East. WorldSpace created its broadcasting system to serve the developing world. Effective and affordable distance health education can be delivered using the multimedia/datacasting capabilities, lectures can be broadcast directly to a remote campus, or to an individual student's Personal Computer. The satellite system also provides the capability to deliver ASHES health information and radio programs to rural communities. Curriculum development. course material will be developed by the international community partners and delivered to African university students. The ASHES course material will comprise of online materials delivered via the internet infrastructure. In the situations where the telecommunication infrastructure of the African nation is unreliable or non existent, the satellite technical architecture provided by WorldSpace will be used. The ASHES initial courses will include: Women’s health, children’s health, human rights, HIV prevention and malaria prevention. Sustainability. The technology is both affordable and sustainable. The one-time cost to connect to a computer is less than 200 USD and it can be set up in a matter of minutes. The cost of transmitting 1 MB file to 1000 locations simultaneously is typically 0.01 USD per site, besides a nominal monthly fee, and there is no need for a telephone infrastructure as a pre-requisite. The cost of implementing a rural community radio receiver to receive the ASHES interactive radio broadcast is 150 USD for each receiver. The human effort to deliver health information to the community is sustainable because all ASHES healthcare courses will require the students to undertake a service learning component as part of their program; this will ensure that there will be a continuous flow of community initiatives between the partner university and the local communities. The philosophy, on which this project has been based, is to empower African educational Institutions with the technological platform, educational material and socio-technical infrastructure to allow them to begin to address their health crisis which is spiraling out of control. This project is currently partitioned into three phases. Phase 1: Planning and Program Design, Phase 2 : Aquisition and Implementation of Technical equipment, Phase 3 : Project Advancement. The project is currently on-going and has successfully completed the first phase activities and has commenced activities in Phase 2. This article will report on the progress so far and discuss the project challenges ahead.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-E1.2.04.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.