DCID Summer Around the World

From the moment patients get into a hospital and give their personal information to nurses, to vitals being taken, to collecting prescriptions and getting lab results, patients leave a trail of their unique personal information all over a health facility. But do we understand the risks of all this? What happens if a health facility decides to sell this information? What happens if the computer systems at the facility are hacked and patient records get publicized? Do we care who reads about our most intimate health information?

This summer I spent seven weeks working with MicroClinic Technologies, a company that developed a heath management system called ZiDi™ -- a prepaid service application that enables clinics and hospitals across Africa to improve the efficiency of health services through enhanced monitoring and evaluation of patient care, revenue, medicines and personnel. ZiDi™ aims to reduce the burden of administrative duties on health workers by helping health facilities collect and store personal health records. Recognizing the amount of personal health records captured and stored using ZiDi™, MicroClinic Technologies understands the risks of collecting and storing sensitive information and the need to keep such information private and confidential. However, the absence of a legal and regulatory policy environment for e-health records in Kenya means that MicroClinic Technologies has no guidelines to help them. 

It was based on this need that I worked with MicroClinic to develop an internal e-health privacy and data security policy. This project required extensive engagement with the developers, legal counsel, owners of clinics and government officials. Most challenging was the need to balance privacy with enforceability; comprehensiveness with cost; and jurisprudence with acceptability. No easy fit for the resource-limited settings under consideration. The policy I developed this summer will serve as guidelines and standards on privacy and security for all personnel and also clearly outlines specific privacy and security obligations that third-party users of ZiDi™ must comply with before and while using the application.

This policy puts MicroClinic Technologies ahead of both government efforts to regulate the e-health sector and most other e-health companies in Kenya. Patients are often understandably more concerned about their health and not about what companies and health facilities may do with their personal information. The implementation of this privacy policy by MicroClinic Technologies upholds patient rights even when neither the market nor the government is demanding them to do so.

I am fortunate and grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of this pioneering movement towards creating standards aimed at upholding privacy and data security for health information in East Africa.

So amidst the busy schedule of my internship, I took some time to explore the tourist destinations in London.

First up, Wimbledon: When the Grand Slam is on, it more than fulfills its promise of being a world class sporting event!

What an awesome summer! Thank you, Duke University, and the MIDP program in particular, for the great opportunity.

Now it's time for us to go to our home country and meet our big, friendly family. See you all very soon!

Spending awesome sunny days enjoying Central Park and other NYC sights with the family. What a beautiful and unique city!

Last week, we had five social innovators from Europe with us @the_young_fdn for an intensive weekend introduction to the UK market.

I had the opportunity to be part of a discussion in the social media cohort for one session. Here is the work that two of these inspiring social innovators from Italy and Spain are doing!

TwLetteratura 

TwLetteratura is a social reading community based on Twitter: They facilitate chats about books, allowing readers to explore, comment, modify and rewrite “tweetbooks.” After winning a prize on cultural innovation in February 2014, TwLetteratura is currently undergoing a business incubation programme at Make a Cube in Milan.

When I asked co-founder Edoardo Montenegro how they deal with the issue of young students being constantly on social media, he told me that the younger students are allowed to feed in their thoughts on paper; then their teacher tweets them. These and some other simple practices make them stand out as compared to many other social media initiatives.

Sustainable Reference

Nowadays significant time and money gets invested in clean tech (electrical cars, wind generators, biofuels, etc.) that contribute to reducing CO2 emissions. At Sustainable Reference (the makers of SustPro), they believe that if we collectively share all those sustainable solutions that are already available and can be applied in our jobs, companies, cities, homes and lifestyles, that we’ll gain a much bigger benefit than what’s gained by any individual technology by itself. Their ambitious objective: Contribute to a reduction of at least 1 percent of global CO2 emissions by the end of 2016.

As part of our internship in social innovation, the interns from London took a day trip to the historic town of Cambridge to learn more about Social Incubator East, a custom-designed program at Cambridge’s Judge Business School designed to find, nurture and enable social innovations. We had an interesting afternoon of discussion with Dr. Neil Stott, Executive Director of the school’s Centre for Social Innovation.

This charming historic town seems to be the perfect place for research and innovation.

The Young Foundation was set up as an urban studies think tank that combined academic research and practical social innovation.

This combination of research and innovation makes it a unique place to work among others. In order to facilitate information sharing, and to learn about the projects on which colleagues have been working, we organise what is called ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions. Today’s was led by Tricia Hackett, Director of Applied Innovation.  

She shared with us the EU initiative on Innovation and Inclusion with URBACT working with the City of York (UK), Tallinn (Estonia), San Sebastian (Spain) and Syracuse (Italy). The initiative is designed to transfer open innovation methods for engaging citizens in identifying and solving urban challenges.

Like most engaging presenters, she shared a really cool video of the URBACT project in Syracuse that highlighted the impact of the work. (Unfortunately the video is not yet public). This was followed by a comparative analysis of the main results in each of the cities.

The key outcomes she shared are a powerful testimony of what can be achieved by low cost open innovation through a participatory approach.

“Our most grand reflection on the success of the transfer of practice related to how willing each city was to be humble, open, curious and brave!” said Tricia. The more they embodied these traits, the more successful they were in engaging citizens, generating ideas and creating better places.

Read more about the initiative.

PS: Notice that I use different spellings, organise and not organize for example. I’m not making a spelling error, my fellow American readers, this is the English way of doing it! :)  

Last week, the Young Foundation offices were buzzing with talk and tweets about the launch of a new report: Unequal Nation: The case for social innovation to work for a gender equal future.

Despite progress in the UK and across the world, women own less, earn less and have less power in decisions that affect their own lives and wider society. Levels of gender-based violence remain high, and gender stereotypes continue to limit what women and men can be and do. Young Foundation believes this doesn’t have to be the case, and society has the power to create a new gender equal future.

Gender Futures is working to develop a gender innovation ecosystem. This will bring together gender equality and social innovation actors to expose and challenge the root causes of gender inequality, and produce credible and inspiring alternatives.

‘Unequal Nation’ presents an up-to-date picture of gender inequality in the UK. It explores how gender equality and social innovation can come together to create a positive, gender equal future for men and women.

The report was launched with a panel of eminent speakers who have done extensive work in gender and innovation. They were all warmly welcomed by CEO Glenys Thornton @GlenysThornton.

Natalie Campbell, Unltd @NatDCampbell

Sarah Green – Acting Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, @sarahthegreen

Jon Huggett – Chair of Social Innovation Exchange @jonhuggett

Anne Kazimirski – Head of Measurement and Evaluation at New Philanthropy Capital @AnneKazimirski

Sara Llewellin – Chief Executive of the Barrow Cadbury Trust  -- Barrow Cadbury Trust ‏@BarrowCadbury

Read the Huffpost article about Unequal Nation.

It's been one week since I joined the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations in NYC. After being in DC for over two months, life in the Big Apple feels completely different. NYC is the loudest city on the planet and it never sleeps... After all, NYC is the most populous city and economic hub of the U.S.

During this week, I met up with all the workers at the Mission and gave a speech about my program at Duke. They were impressed to hear that the Sanford School was rated the second most innovative public service school in the U.S. this year.

Working at the UN is a great opportunity to get to know the inner workings of such a big international organization. I am really enjoying interning here - I have already made many new friends here and am happy to be creating such a strong network.

Annecy, France. A fantastic day trip from Geneva, and respite from the temperatures which topped 100! This region does not normally experience this heat, and few buildings even have fans, much less air conditioning. The only relief from the heat is to jump in the refreshing cold lakes that are fed from the Alps!

Development is a pretty tough field. Even the host NGO (Seva Mandir, which has been committed to poverty relief in Rajasthan for over 40 years) is still facing huge unmet needs in education, healthcare and livelihoods. I highly appreciate and respect what NGOs have done here, but the absence of government in local development makes their efforts less productive. For example, we could easily suggest providing youngsters with e-learning opportunities, but power shortages and lack of Internet access are challenges that cannot be tackled by NGOs alone. How to leverage the big system is the core issue we ought to focus on.

Duke Program on Global Policy and Governance course week: an exciting entry into the work of IGOs and NGOs and the work they are doing at the intersection of the Environment, Energy, and Economics!

Today my internship with the World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture team is over. I have enjoyed working with this team and I appreciate having had the wonderful opportunity to be a part of it, even for this short period of time. I’ve made lots of friends from all around the world and also met many interesting and experienced people from various fields.

At the end of the day, my team threw me a surprise farewell party, which made me happy and sad at the same time. It was so nice and thoughtful; everyone wished me well and gave me a nice gift. I am sad to leave the team because it feels like I have known them all my life. However, I will continue to work with the team remotely because they still need my help to finish up an analysis of the agriculture sector.    

Besides the great people that I met during my time here, I’ve gained lots of new skills and knowledge.  

My next journey will be the United Nations in NYC. Will be in touch shortly!

On the last day of my internship at the World Bank I met up with Gulnara Febres, the Senior Operations Officer at the WB. She is the first Kazakh student who graduated from the Master of International Development Policy program at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy in 1996. So, Gulnara is the very first builder of the bridge between Sanford and Kazakhstan.  

We had a great conversation, sharing our educational and life experiences at Duke. I was very surprised to hear that Gulnara used to study with Francis Lethem (the former Director of DCID), and she still has warm memories about their friendship.

One of the many stories that made me laugh was how Jonathan Abels (the Chief Operating Officer for the Duke Center for International Development) served pizza to her for the first time in her life. Yes, in the 1990s most people from the Soviet Union didn’t have any experience with fast food. She still remembers the taste of that pizza.

Gulnara mentioned that the MIDP experience helped her a lot in developing her career and it gave her a key to open new endeavors. We both are proud of Duke University, which creates great networks with the best opportunities.