Today we release a new version of Sendinel. As usual it is available for download on our project page and we have also updated the demo system.
In this release we have made final adjustments of the system. For example when you want to register a patient for a missing medicine, it is now possible to immediately add the missing medicine to the list.
We have also written a Developer Documentation (html|pdf). We think it is a great starting point for everyone who wants to start extending Sendinel with own code.
We encourage everyone to continue working with and on Sendinel. We provide documentations for developers and users, an installation guide and a solid code base which should make it easy for interested people to get going.
This release is going to be the last one from our team since we will now focus on writing our bachelor thesis.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Bachelorpodium and Project Poster
Every year all bachelor projects from the Hasso-Plattner-Institut present their results at the Bachelorpodium. We will also present Sendinel there. The Bachelorpodium takes place on July 2nd starting 16:00 MESZ at the Hasso-Plattner-Institut in Potsdam, Germany. You can follow the Bacherlorpodium on a live stream at the tele-taching platform provided by the Hasso-Plattner-Institut: http://www.tele-task.de.
We also have prepared a poster which describes Sendinel and its use cases. The text is written in german, because the Bachelorpodium is also held in German.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Related Projects
In this post we would like to refer to other projects who work on the same topic like Sendinel. All projects are Open Source Software and focus on developing countries.
OpenMRS is an electronic medical record system, where the patients' data is saved and processed in the hospital. They are working on a messaging module, which will allow the patient and the hospital to communicate by using mobile phones.
ResultsSMS works on secure delivery of test results to the patients via SMS.
FrontlineSMS focuses on delivering and analyzing bulk SMS.
TxtAlert sends SMS to remind patients of appointments.
So let's see what is similar and what is different in these projects.
The core idea of Sendinel (notifying and reminding patients) is very similar to TxtAlert. ResultsSMS focuses solely on delivering test results. Sendinel does not support that but only sends the notification that test results are ready to be picked up. Therefore ResultsSMS puts much more emphasis on security questions than Sendinel.
OpenMRS is supporting the complete hospital workflow from patients entering the hospital to leaving it again. Sendinel on the other hand only tackles the sending of information. FrontlineSMS is a very generic solution that is not specially tailored to the hospital use case.
In contrast to all the other projects Sendinel supports not only SMS but also VoiceCalls or Bluetooth as alternative ways of communication.
As you can see, the area of mobile communication in the health sector is something a lot of people see potential in and actually take effort to work on. We are proud to be able to contribute to this sector.
Please feel free to add more projects in the comments.
OpenMRS is an electronic medical record system, where the patients' data is saved and processed in the hospital. They are working on a messaging module, which will allow the patient and the hospital to communicate by using mobile phones.
ResultsSMS works on secure delivery of test results to the patients via SMS.
FrontlineSMS focuses on delivering and analyzing bulk SMS.
TxtAlert sends SMS to remind patients of appointments.
So let's see what is similar and what is different in these projects.
The core idea of Sendinel (notifying and reminding patients) is very similar to TxtAlert. ResultsSMS focuses solely on delivering test results. Sendinel does not support that but only sends the notification that test results are ready to be picked up. Therefore ResultsSMS puts much more emphasis on security questions than Sendinel.
OpenMRS is supporting the complete hospital workflow from patients entering the hospital to leaving it again. Sendinel on the other hand only tackles the sending of information. FrontlineSMS is a very generic solution that is not specially tailored to the hospital use case.
In contrast to all the other projects Sendinel supports not only SMS but also VoiceCalls or Bluetooth as alternative ways of communication.
As you can see, the area of mobile communication in the health sector is something a lot of people see potential in and actually take effort to work on. We are proud to be able to contribute to this sector.
Please feel free to add more projects in the comments.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Video on Sendinel at HPI-TV
Our institute has made a movie about the development of Sendinel. You can see the video below. Unfortunately it is in German only at the moment, but we hope to be able to provide an English version in the near future.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Release of Sendinel Version 0.2
Today we have released Sendinel 0.2. There are a few new features:
Medicine Waiting Lists
We have added a new feature group, the waiting lists for medicine.
When the clinic is out of stock for a medicine and some patient should get it, the patient can be assigned to the waiting list. If the medicine arrives at the clinic, the clinic staff can send a message to all patients who are currently waiting for it.
Bluetooth
Up till now patients could be contacted using sms or phone calls. When it comes to appointment reminders however, you could also just use calendar entries to remind them. So from this release on you can also push calendar entries on the patients' mobile phones to remind them of their appointment. This option is an especially good extension to the other ways of communication, since it doesn't generate any costs at all.
If you do not want to use Bluetooth, it can be switched off via the settings.py.
Authentication
If you want to make sure, that the patients can really be reached under the telephone number they told you, you can switch on authentication. Then every time that the patients' phone number has to be entered, the patient is asked to authenticate the number. In order to do so, the patient has to ring the number of the SIM card that sticks in the UMTS-stick. If Sendinel recognizes an incoming call with the same number as told by the patient, the number is authenticated.
Sendinel does not answer the call of the patient, so this feature does not generate any costs for the patient.
The release can be found on the project page. You can check out the current version on our live demo system. Of course the user manual (html|pdf) and the installation instructions (html|pdf) are revised as well.
This release is the last release with new features from the bachelor project team in its current form. We hope however that Sendinel will continue to exist and be further developed by other people. It looks very good right now that this will happen.
- You can now put patients on waiting lists for medicine
- Bluetooth has been added to the ways of communication
- Authentication can be switched on
Medicine Waiting Lists
We have added a new feature group, the waiting lists for medicine.
When the clinic is out of stock for a medicine and some patient should get it, the patient can be assigned to the waiting list. If the medicine arrives at the clinic, the clinic staff can send a message to all patients who are currently waiting for it.
Bluetooth
Up till now patients could be contacted using sms or phone calls. When it comes to appointment reminders however, you could also just use calendar entries to remind them. So from this release on you can also push calendar entries on the patients' mobile phones to remind them of their appointment. This option is an especially good extension to the other ways of communication, since it doesn't generate any costs at all.
If you do not want to use Bluetooth, it can be switched off via the settings.py.
Authentication
If you want to make sure, that the patients can really be reached under the telephone number they told you, you can switch on authentication. Then every time that the patients' phone number has to be entered, the patient is asked to authenticate the number. In order to do so, the patient has to ring the number of the SIM card that sticks in the UMTS-stick. If Sendinel recognizes an incoming call with the same number as told by the patient, the number is authenticated.
Sendinel does not answer the call of the patient, so this feature does not generate any costs for the patient.
The release can be found on the project page. You can check out the current version on our live demo system. Of course the user manual (html|pdf) and the installation instructions (html|pdf) are revised as well.
This release is the last release with new features from the bachelor project team in its current form. We hope however that Sendinel will continue to exist and be further developed by other people. It looks very good right now that this will happen.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
What do you need to install Sendinel?
If you want to install Sendinel, you need to meet a few hardware requirements.
The server needs the 3G UMTS stick "Huawei K3520", also known as E169. This UMTS stick is the only stick known to us which works well with the Asterisk server to properly send SMS and phone calls in the local telecommunication networks.
In the UMTS stick, you need to have a working SIM-card with airtime on it.
When you have all this, you can install Sendinel and use it on the computer.
You can also use Sendinel on more computers like Laptops in the consultation rooms. We call these computers "terminal computers". All terminal computers connect to the server via a network like wifi using their browser, so usually there is no extra software needed. If you want to use the Bluetooth feature, the terminal computers need to have Bluetooth.
- A Computer
- A 3G USB UMTS stick "Huawei K3520"
- A SIM-card with airtime
The server needs the 3G UMTS stick "Huawei K3520", also known as E169. This UMTS stick is the only stick known to us which works well with the Asterisk server to properly send SMS and phone calls in the local telecommunication networks.
In the UMTS stick, you need to have a working SIM-card with airtime on it.
When you have all this, you can install Sendinel and use it on the computer.
You can also use Sendinel on more computers like Laptops in the consultation rooms. We call these computers "terminal computers". All terminal computers connect to the server via a network like wifi using their browser, so usually there is no extra software needed. If you want to use the Bluetooth feature, the terminal computers need to have Bluetooth.
Sendinel blog post on ict4d.at
ICT4D.at is an "Austrian Network for Information and Communication Technolgies for Development". It aims at contributing to the international ict4d-movement by starting projects and reporting about activities in that field. They also write a blog and we have been featured with a guest post there, where we give an overview of Sendinel. The post can be found here.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Background of the Sendinel Project
In this blog post we want to introduce our group and explain the background of the Sendinel Project.
Our team during the research trip in South Africa
The Sendinel development team consist of the seven people you can see on the picture above. We are 7 Bachelor students at the Hasso Plattner Institute.
The Institute is associated with the University of Potsdam and was founded by Hasso Plattner, who is also one of the founders of SAP. The course of studies is called IT-Systems Engineering, which is very similar to Computer Science, but focuses more on practical experiences and engineering. This is also why a crucial part of the graduation process is the so-called bachelor project.
A bachelor project lasts about a 9 months and is conducted by a group of students, who work on it half-time in the beginning and full-time in the last months. The objective of the project is to find and develop a solution for problems in the real world. We have started developing Sendinel in September 2009 and will finish the project in July 2010, when we will graduate as Bachelors of Science as well.
Through the project we had the opportunity to learn how to organize and execute a software project. We gained insight in official communication flows and learned more about the South African health system. We are happy with the outcome and hope that we will find somebody to continue the development.
Our team during the research trip in South Africa
The Sendinel development team consist of the seven people you can see on the picture above. We are 7 Bachelor students at the Hasso Plattner Institute.
The Institute is associated with the University of Potsdam and was founded by Hasso Plattner, who is also one of the founders of SAP. The course of studies is called IT-Systems Engineering, which is very similar to Computer Science, but focuses more on practical experiences and engineering. This is also why a crucial part of the graduation process is the so-called bachelor project.
A bachelor project lasts about a 9 months and is conducted by a group of students, who work on it half-time in the beginning and full-time in the last months. The objective of the project is to find and develop a solution for problems in the real world. We have started developing Sendinel in September 2009 and will finish the project in July 2010, when we will graduate as Bachelors of Science as well.
Through the project we had the opportunity to learn how to organize and execute a software project. We gained insight in official communication flows and learned more about the South African health system. We are happy with the outcome and hope that we will find somebody to continue the development.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Live Demo System
Today we have released a demo version of Sendinel. You can access it at http://demo.sendinel.org.
Please click around and get a feeling of the current state which Sendinel is in. The actual message sending is disabled in this version so you can test without doing anything wrong.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
First Release of Sendinel
We are happy to announce that after over half a year of research and development today we finally released the first version of Sendinel.
The current release features notifications and reminders as well as messages that can be sent to single or groups of patients. You can see the system in action here in a screencast:
There is also a detailed User Guide available as html and pdf.
To download the actual application, please go to this download page, where you can also find the requirements and detailed installation instructions (html|pdf).
Feel free to contact us at contact [at] sendinel.org, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our blog or watch the repository on GitHub.
And please spread the word about this release since we are still searching for people who want to participate in the development of Sendinel or implement it at their clinic.
The current release features notifications and reminders as well as messages that can be sent to single or groups of patients. You can see the system in action here in a screencast:
There is also a detailed User Guide available as html and pdf.
To download the actual application, please go to this download page, where you can also find the requirements and detailed installation instructions (html|pdf).
Feel free to contact us at contact [at] sendinel.org, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our blog or watch the repository on GitHub.
And please spread the word about this release since we are still searching for people who want to participate in the development of Sendinel or implement it at their clinic.
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