The Real Show

Ola Amigo…

Finally it was the time for the real show, the real test for our idea, implementation, and last eight months of coding hard work that we pulled off as senior year students in Drexel. We went on the real field to test our software. We finally had the real users, the healthcare workers and patients. The day started with in house random testing. We realized that the format of the message changed every time we forwarded a message from smartphone to non-smartphone. We sent some messages for testing the system and off course now what else can go wrong?  Mcell (the phone carrier in Mozambique) decided not to work. Alright… back to the server, we checked, everything was good on our end. What the heck was wrong then? Why were we not getting the confirmation message from the system. And finally after three hours of struggle and chaos, all of a sudden Mcell sent us four messages together. Yay!! Thanks Mcell for remembering that some messages were in queue that took three hours to show up. Okay so now we are off to the location for testing. Here comes the actual stage, Mucamba Feha. The first message sent. After 2 minutes, Ahh.. maan 2 minutes .. No reply from the system yet.. Damm. This was the final testing we were doing right at the location before the healthcare workers had to do it, right after the introduction of the project. This time the data was not going to the database. What could it be.. a technical bug? Possibly. Counselor spelled as counsolor...a typo. I must say Tamanna is good at catching these errors .Tarika almost got a heart attack with her fingers crossed obviously. And finally one more message… and the phone beeps… New Message…“Obrigado! As informacoes foram salvas em nosso banco de dados.” with the information also saved in the database.  In English “Thank you! Your information has been saved in our database”.  

And by the way, it is not over yet. In Mucamba Feha, people mostly use movitel and not Mcell, another phone carrier in Mozambique. But Movitel does not allow sending messages internationally. Also, the healthcare workers did not have any balance at all in their phones, the financial status of the people there was not good. We kept on thinking and thinking, brainstorming for a solution to this problem and finally we found one. We decided to make a Mcell phone number in Mozambique a central number that the healthcare workers can send messages to for free. This solved problems, sending messages internationally and no balance in the phones. Then we taught the healthcare workers how to type the message, the format. The important part of it was explaining them the format in “Portuguese”. Really….Wait, Miguel how does we say this in Portuguese… “Put coma (,) before you send it”. We know, our Portuguese is a disaster. Thanks Miguel for being our reliable teacher and a translator in the whole process. They all send it to Mcell number and we forwarded the message internationally from there. What a relief… and the first real field Beta Test of Connect the Dots project was after all a success.

This first day on real field experience taught us many things. First, please learn Portuguese if you want to speak. Second, the important one………..make the fucking format easier so that people can actually type it with non-smart phones. So the next target, improve the message format. Remove the double quotes (“ “). In addition, this trip was pretty fun with Miguel, Elfie (Missionary Nurse) and the way through the bumpy road. Can’t forget Elfie holding a huge cockroach in her hand and trying to scare Dhairya…he is a pretty good actor. How come you are a CEO of a company and not an actor D?

We will be back with more updates soon, lot of work to do with very less time left in Mozambique. 

Ate logo…

(See you later! )

Welcome to Mozambique...

“How time flies!  I didn’t know you guys a year ago. lol   We won two hackathons, completed senior design with A and got job offers. When you guys arrive in Africa, you guys become the main players for this project!  Enjoy your time in Mozambique!” Thanks Yi, your message reminded us of where all this got started. Impactors Rock!! Did you guys know how these three people became such an awesome team after all? We will tell you this story some other time because we have a lot of other very interesting things to share right now.

From this blog, you guys realize that we finally reached Mozambique safe and sound after successfully getting the in-transit visa for South Africa in one day while our stay in New York.  And by the way, the surprises did not end there. We had to stay in a hotel in South Africa for one night because of some issues with the ticket confirmation. Seems like we all stay in a different world, people in South Africa said that they don’t trust the online email confirmation for our reservation. But all is well that ends well, as we said we finally made it to Mozambique safe and sound. We are ready for new surprises because that’s what we get here every single day.

Now let’s talk about some real work, after all that’s what we are here for isn’t it? We met Dr. Arlindo, Director of Public Health of Chicuque Rual Hospital, on the second day and got started on work. He discussed a few different kind of problems that they are facing currently. We mentioned how our software can solve their numerous problems and got the opportunity to present our project “Connect the Dots” the third day. This is definitely a good head start. Thanks to Ycenter and Drexel CCI for hosting the whole show. After having these meetings, we came to a conclusion that in addition to using Connect the Dots for just Malaria, we are going to add the functionality in it to collect the data on HIV. During the meeting Dr. Arlindo mentioned about a huge problem of collecting data using questionnaires from different communities. We take internet almost for granted. It is unbelievable that just because the internet is limited or not at all available at most of the places here, they have to travel to communities approximately 75 km (that is 46 miles)  to get those completed questionnaires, then input all the data manually in the software to make any analysis.  We are now working on adding the functionality in Connect the Dots that will allow collecting the answer to the surveys or questionnaires related to HIV through text message and save them in the database. Softwares can make lives easier. And to test this beta version , we are going from Maxixe to Mucamba fae. Awesome right!

The one major good news that you all should know is that until yet we tested Connect the Dots software only using United States numbers. Now we tested the software with the numbers in Mozambique and it works. Cheers!!

Wait… we forgot, the beach view is awesome here in Maxixe. We loved the batata frieta and the apples. Our friend used to call Tarika “French Fry Queen”, I think she is still the same even. Batata frieta is French fries!! And off course she loves them. We also watched Source Code movie and travelled in chappa (local public transport in Maxixe). We will keep the surprises coming. We are on it! See you guys later!!

Adventurous Start to an Adventurous Trip

Ola Amigo.

Finally the countdown is to zero. And we are ready to board the flight to Mozambique to “Connect the Dots” to make an impact.  At 6:15 am, new lavish black car shows up in front of our building to pick us up to go to JFK Airport, New York. Excitements were on the height. Thank you so much Drexel for a special treat. Finally, we reached the airport at 9:30 am. Hold on, how everything can go so smooth?  Oh wait here comes the problem, according to our itinerary we are supposed to have a 2 hours halt in South Africa to go to Mozambique. And from now on, we need a separate in-transit visa for South Africa in order to board the plane.

Then happened a lot of back and forth discussions, the airline people helped and moved our flight reservation to tomorrow, March 28 now. But the question is “How are we going to get a visa to another country in one day”. Here comes the most impactful call from Andrea Allimatiris, Director of Finance, College of Computing and Informatics (CCI), Drexel. Her perfect words “Don’t worry, we will take care of everything”.   Such a relief! Thanks Andrea, you are awesome! Thanks, we love you Drexel CCI!! On field, we are the players, but in this whole show Drexel and Y-center are playing the biggest roles to make this show happen. Thank you so much Drexel and Ycenter. So finally off to Manhattan, first time in 4 years, I reached in Manhattan without any plans. Then we showed up at the consulate’s office without visa application with a hope for a visa within next 5 hours. Pretty interesting isn’t it? 

Every experience is a new experience.  Then starts the race, got the application done, paperwork requirements, thank God we had copies of all the documents. First time in New York, but with previous experience of map navigation from Philadelphia made us survive this day in New York. We ran to the nearest CVS to get the photos at 12:30pm and ran back to reach the visa office by 1pm (closing time). But finally, we made it. We submitted the application. Let’s get to the present. We are writing this blog while we are sitting in the Visa office at 3:30 waiting to collect our passports at 4pm. And finally we got the visa and checked into a hotel. All thanks to Andrea. We told everyone that, “We are ready for the next adventure”. But we were not expecting it to start this early :P.  Everyone who gave us best wishes, thanks, we packed all the wishes with us J.  Here is the view from the window of our room:

Moral of the story: 

Adventure does not start at a new place, it starts when you feel it!!

We will be back with the update soon... Stay tuned. 

Cheers to Impactors!!

Hi Everyone,

The count down is on....2 more months to go........This time, We were so excited to write this blog. Because as a developer the greatest accomplishment happens when our code actually works. According to George S Patton, “Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory”. Every time we go in the meeting, Dhairya (Co-Founder, Y-Center) always start with explaining a new problem we need to solve. The best and important problem of the year was the internet uncertainty in Mozambique, Africa. By the end of 1 month (after knowing this problem), we are glad to announce that we figured out a solution for that problem.

The process of solving this issue took number of meetings and discussions. Finally we faced it and now we are moving ahead. So the users can use our application without using internet. The user can update the data without the internet although our product is a web application but it is accessible even offline. This challenge was the major part. Now continuing we are back on continuing small milestones in our way to Mozambique, Africa. Thank you Dhairya for giving us “challenges” and giving the feel of being in real field. And Thanks to Prof. Jennifer Booker (Faculty Mentor, College of Computing and Informatics) for guiding us through all the challenges.

The mix of excitement and nervousness is in the air. In all this, the major part of our travel, the “expenses” challenge has also been accomplished. For that, we are thankful to the Dean of College of Computing and Informatics, Dr. David Fenske. He is a great personality who is open to new ideas. And we are honored to be in contact with him and thankful for his enthusiastic support.

The official update is that flight reservations in next on the To Do List... Then Immunizations... Lots of things need to be done yet... But we are ready... Ready to make an Impact.. That is the reason we named our team “Impactors”

A peak look on our Software: Stay tuned for future updates:

Logistics to Databases

Ola Amigo!!

Como estas :)

The Count down begins..... 4 months to go....

Time moves forward.. you move forward.. Got done with finals week and eventually survived them. Trigger to the next meeting was the email sent by Dhairya, the host of the show asking “When are we meeting this week?”.  Meeting started with the introduction to Interstellar. Out of four of us in the meeting, two people watched the movie, but two of them didn’t. So “Interstellar” fans started to explain the movie theme to the other two. Then we went back to the logistics of our project. We also saw many photos of our CEO’s Mozambique trip which made us very excited for our trip. While going through the photos, we found something very interesting. You wanna see it..

What do you guys think it is... Its surprising... its patient’s records.. hmmm. Thats the another thing we are trying to eliminate and trying to get some accountability through electronic medical records. Dhairya said that he took this picture so that no one else need to take this picture again. For a minute, we had no idea what he was talking about. But then we realized that he is talking about eliminating this problem.

The new addition is the new student mentor to our team. A big round of applause for “David Rupprecht” for joining our team. He is an exchange student from Germany studied in Drexel for Fall term. Great personality with a lot of knowledge about Cyber Security. He is graduating with Master’s in Cyber Security this June.We discussed an important aspect of the security of the data we will be collecting. It is very important for us to secure and encrypt the patient data we will have in our database.

It was a productive meeting discussing which parts of the data needs to be encrypted. Malaria is one of the concerns of World Health Organization (WHO), so we are definitely sticking to WHO guideline in order to collect the information which can be used for future analysis. Getting the information about the use of Insecticide Treated nets and number of children in the family is also important.

Life is a Struggle... Project is a challenge.... The challenges are coming and going. HTML5 Version is the way to the internet unavailability. We will give update as soon as we get it done. This is just an idea. Since now we know there is difference in an idea and an implementation. Will get back to you on this.  

Final Notice by Dhairya Pujara “Install Duolingo and start to learn Portuguese”... Yes Sir... We are on it.....

Mapping to Logistics..

Ola Amigo!!

It feels good…. when you come back to your good habit after long time. Yes, the good habit of writing a blog after every week’s meeting. Sorry, Dhairya Pujara we are lagging in our posts. But we will catch up.

No news is always good news. Well no one got to know about the updates of our project, does not mean that we got knocked out of the door. We are still there, surviving the strong winds with the help of our supporters. Huge round of applause for the Dean of College of Computing and Informatics,  Mr. David Fenske for his strong support.  He is officially on-board for this project, being a strong inspiration which have a huge meaning for us. The day we met him, he said “I am not surprised that you won, In fact I am happy that you won.”, The time we understood the meaning we felt on the top of the world. Thank you Dean for that encouraging statement, it means a lot.

Getting to the technical details, the project is on smooth sailing with some ups and downs. We discussed about the details of what kind of tables we need to have in our databases. What kind of information is important to be stored in our databases and how we can use that information to do future analysis? Getting ready to move our database to Microsoft Azure is another next step we are getting ready for.

The meeting started with a question, What if there is no internet for your application for two weeks. Every time we go to meeting we feel like we are the boss, and then in every meeting Dhairya put a new challenge in front of us and then we are like “I am not sure if we can do that”. Well discussing the logistics of our project, and trying to put our foot in someone else’s shoe is another job we are doing right now. We are trying to figure out what kind of things can become a limited resource in Mozambique, Africa. And trust me, that is not an easy job. Being in Philadelphia and assuming not to have internet is like being in a pool and thinking about a desert.

But we are getting there, we will face it, crack it and will get through it.

Thinking to Mapping

Ola Amigo!! 

Como estas....

I guess we are getting bit used to this language now... hmm. “Practice makes a man perfect”... We got it Mom!! Great learnings from childhood.. is’nt it?

Alright!!! Lets get back to real work... Third meeting, back to Y-Center

Pujara’s first question “Think about one and only one company you like the most”... God!! Tough question... At the back of the head all of us have many companies we like..  But coming up with one... That’s hard!... 

But we did it.. we finally chose one and only one company we like the most and listed five reasons why we like it.. There you go.. from that we started the design thinking, real word “thinking”. Great starting question Dhairya, it actually made us “think”.

Then after an hour of design thinking and then mind mapping ... we got out with this... Looks good right?

Then we reorganized the ideas and processes on four different components of our project within a hour.

Isn’t this cool?...why our schools don’t do it this way. This is so much fun and so much effective. This is called Design Thinking and Mind Mapping. It is very impressive that how all three of us came up with some different aspects in each part of our project. We have been working on this one project for quite a while now and we are on same page, but still different perspectives. At last we could put all of that together to make it work. This shows that we are a great team that complements each other with different aspects...good for us.

Another thing we did during our meeting that was not related to our project. Usually this does not happen in a project meetings, but as we say our mentor Dhairya is a cool person. We do some fun stuff in our meetings. That's the reason.. We love to go to this meeting. All of us came up with our favorite companies. Another surprise…. all three of us...the tech geeks...came up with IT companies and our mentor’s reaction on this...You guys are nerds! Okay... That's from where we started to think out of the box... Lesson from the meeting “Use common sense even for complex things specially when you get stuck somewhere”.

Thanks to our mentor Dhairya.. for this different design thinking and mind mapping session.