Ken Banks, the brilliant creator of FrontlineSMS is now delivering a Lawrence-Lessig-style presentation at the Humanitarian Tech Challenge. It's all interesting and worth comment, but right now he's talking about a friend of his who took "a laptop and 100 used cell phones" to St. Gabriel's Hospital in Malawi.
That small amount of equipment served 250,000 people, saved $3500 in fuel costs and saved 1,000 hours in travel time. Incredible.
The Humanitarian Technology Challenge is a partnership between the IEEE and the UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, and seeks to define and develop sustainable solutions to humanitarian challenges in the developing world. These solutions should be able to be implemented locally and "within the environment, cultural, structural, political, and socio-economic conditions where they will be developed."