What Ebola Is Teaching Us About Hard Trends

WIRED     Essay by David Burris                                                                                        Dec. 14, 2014

...Deadly and infectious viruses such as Ebola are an inevitable and unavoidable fact of nature. In other words, they are examples of a Hard Trend. And they demand new innovations in order to combat them.

...the deadly force of Ebola is the kind of imminent threat that inspires human minds to new heights. It teaches us that Hard Trends come at us fast and provide the catalyst to overcome inertia and bring about technological innovations.

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Communication is key to mobilizing populations in countries affected by Ebola. In order to treat the sick and prevent the spread of the disease, healthcare workers need to be able to coordinate with people on the frontline and know where to send supplies. At the moment, telecommunications technologies are not keeping pace with the intense demands that Ebola creates.

In Ebola-affected countries, like Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone....the telecommunications networks are currently weak. For example, in Liberia the 3G and 4G networks are very thin outside of the capital city of Monrovia, and it’s hard for citizens to access electricity to power internet-capable mobile devices. U-report is a solution that uses simple mobile phones in West Africa to connect health workers to the government and hundreds of thousands of young people to key information and services using basic voice and SMS services.

The innovator who creates an internet-capable smartphone device that’s as affordable and simple-to-use as an SMS-capable phone will be at the forefront of helping to ease communication problems in Ebola-affected regions — and the rest of the world will benefit from the solution too.

Big data analytics is currently helping to draw detailed maps of population movements in Ebola-affected countries by gathering information collected from mobile phones. ...Nevertheless, data collected from mobile phones can only give a partial picture. Big data analysts recognize that they need to bring together information from multiple other sources and mine those sources to find patterns.

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http://www.wired.com/2014/12/ebola-hard-trends/