Date: 14/11/2009

IEEE sponsored HTC workshop discuss challenging technologies

70 people from 15 countries participated in the first Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) workshop, which was held on 26-28 October in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. This workshop is focused on defining plans for field tests to address the three selected challenges presented at the June HTC conference, sponsored by IEEE and the United Nations Foundation.

The participants were primarily technologists, however, approximately 20 humanitarians, foundation, and government representatives also attended the meetings. Canada, India, Italy, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Switzerland, Virgin Islands, and USA all sent representatives. Most participants were IEEE members from industry or academia, but 10 IEEE student and IEEE GOLD (Graduates-Of-the-Last-Decade) members were also in attendance.

The workshop concluded with basic plans established for four field tests:

Providing an integrated power-on-demand electricity supply and management system
Establishing a network of 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi data communications links among small rural outposts
Identifying patients by facial characteristics in a clinical setting
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) linked to medical records

The field test teams will now seek funding from large foundations, non-governmental organizations and other sources.