Ready for Life

InSTEDD is the brainchild of Google.org’s executive director, epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant, who conceived of it nearly two years ago when he won the TED prize, a grant-making wish foundation that helps raise funds for humanitarian projects. They are now the main benefactor in the “Predict and Prevent” category of Google’s foundation which uses technology to address changes in global situations.

At the time, Brilliant said: “My dream for InSTEDD (a name that plays off the TED conference) is to fulfill the much-needed role of an independent agent bringing the technological, medical, and organizational skills necessary to help the humanitarian aid community accomplish (early detection of public health threats and disasters), and ultimately help them to make the world a safer place.”

InSTEDD is receiving funds from a Google.org charitable foundation donation. One of several grants from the foundation to help fund research on communication and health disaster management and disease surveillance. Identifying early threats and sharing information to help manage “hot spots.”

Part of the research includes building a communication based tool on a Twitter-bot framework to send SMS messages from remote areas or in an overloaded network. Social media that we use everyday, making changes in communication. Awesome.

Original article at http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9852369-7.html