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Paul (one of the co-founders of OpenMRS) is looking for help! Initially, he needs help answering some questions, but see below for what sounds like an interesting opportunity in Kenya. Can anyone answer his questions? If you can, would you please stop by our IRC channel? He's currently hanging out in there. Here's some of our recent chatter on IRC: <docpaul> so, one of my jobs is to direct a program called AMPATH.... Academic Model for Providing Access to Healthcare <docpaul> it's really where OpenMRS was born <docpaul> it manages upwards of 2 million people's healthcare <docpaul> they provide very comprehensive services, including nutrition support and vocational training <docpaul> a "catcher's mitt" of sorts for the poor.. :) <docpaul> one of the initiatives that we've been talking about relates to how we provide nutrition support <docpaul> today, AMPATH maintains over a dozen farms and has a fairly massive food distribution program <docpaul> so that HIV positive patients have food to eat... as drugs alone don't make people well. :) <docpaul> but we've been thinking about moving to a model where instead of AMPATH providing food to the community, we'd create an "economy" of sorts around letting community farmers provide this <docpaul> so, the model we've considered is to give patients electronic "credits" which could be redeemed in the community... <docpaul> food producers could accept these credits <docpaul> and then convert them to cash that was held by AMPATH <docpaul> does this make sense? <meonkeys> I follow so far <docpaul> so, given what I've described, it seemed that there were many parallels to what is happening in the microfinancing world <docpaul> with the primary exception that AMPATH is the "bank" so to speak <docpaul> we centrally hold the "credits" <docpaul> but an infrastructure needs to be put into place to allow individuals to monitor and distribute credits <docpaul> and allow food producers to "bring" these credits back to AMPATH to convert to $ <docpaul> if you were in my shoes, and you were naive to this world, and wanted to take a crash course on the state of the art open soruce technology in support of <docpaul> i could go on more to give thoughts about where we could go with such a credit "economy", but suffice it to say, I think there are many other use cases that go beyond the simple food distribution problem <docpaul> i see it as a way of ultimately incentivizing good health behaviors <meonkeys> sure, makes sense <docpaul> but i know you all are friends to our ethos, and i know you've developed software that integrates with microfinance banks <docpaul> but unclear whether our use case fits the kind of model you've designed towards <docpaul> i'm not certain that we need to integrate with a traditional "bank" at this point <meonkeys> are you looking for feedback on the credits model, or wondering if Mifos can be used to manage the credits? <meonkeys> or something else? <docpaul> both... and i'm also looking for people that can help me understand what open source technology is out there in this space <docpaul> and what's passed quality muster <docpaul> can mifos be used in this way? <docpaul> hah, sorry if I've hit you with too much at once <meonkeys> :) <docpaul> it's how my brain works <docpaul> what do you do for mifos? <meonkeys> I'm a software engineer, and I do much of the technical side of community collaboration <meonkeys> I work for the Grameen Foundation. <docpaul> excellent <meonkeys> So, these are great questions. :) <docpaul> and it's unlikely that any of them have simple answers... haha <docpaul> that's why i came to ask the favor. : <docpaul> have you ever heard of a model where a system maintains and replenishes the finance centrally, and then tries to maintain an independent "credit" economy around goods and services within a community? <docpaul> aid is what replenishes the finances... it's not a loan in this case <meonkeys> I don't think so... <meonkeys> sorry, I think these questions are a bit over my head. <docpaul> i just want to make sure we're leveraging the good work that groups like you have already done <docpaul> instead of starting from scratch once again <docpaul> fwiw, we have funding to do this work <docpaul> from the world food program <docpaul> so if there are geeks in kenya that want to work in one of the coolest environments i've ever been in <docpaul> send them to me. :) <docpaul> especially if they know java. :D <docpaul> just trying to fact find, and i havent found a "pattern" that what we're doing closely aligns with <docpaul> closest is microfinance, which led me to you <docpaul> any designers at grameen that'd be sympathetic to someone who co-founded openmrs and wanted a favor? :) <docpaul> perhaps this in some way could help integrate openmrs and mifos more closely together as software products
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