My Opera news » Opera and Baobab fight against HIV

Opera and Baobab fight against HIV

Thursday, 22. March 2007, 12:30:09

Baobab, using the Opera browser, has produced a healthcare system that allows health workers to administer high quality HIV treatment programs according to World Health Organization guidelines. The system is currently deployed in Malawi, a country in the midst of an HIV crisis.

"The reason many of us find working in technology so worthwhile is seeing projects like this become reality," said Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera. And we couldn't aggree more. It's great to see that technology can do its part to power projects that promote progress in the developing world .

The solution itself is a slimmed-down touchscreen computer running Linux and Opera. Baobab uses Opera because it conserves limited system resources while being able to run a user interface so simple that people who have never operated a computer before can use it to provide quality health care treatment.

"There are 40 million people living with HIV on our planet, we need solutions, and we need them fast if we are going to have an impact on this crisis," said Gerry Douglas, Founder, Baobab Health Partnership.

For more information, read the press release.

Comments

Dan Alexandru # 22. March 2007, 12:54

Screenshots! http://www.baobabhealth.org/tag/vct-videos

agony # 22. March 2007, 12:57

wow, thats damn great

Cecilia # 22. March 2007, 13:20

That sounds great! Is there anything we could do to help?

Thomas Ford # 22. March 2007, 13:38

Hi CelciliaL,

It's great that you want to get involved. From what I know, there are generally two ways people can help:

1. Spread the word. As more people know about the project it becomes easier for Baoabab to attract equipment, funding, personnel, etc. They aren't a big charity and as such don't spend money on grant writing and publicity like large organizations. They spend their time in the field making a difference.

2. Help them out with a charitable donation. I know they have a button on their website to donate.

Thanks again for your interest. I know they appreciate it!

saito # 22. March 2007, 13:50

http://www.baobabhealth.org/tag/baobab-linux
It seems they use embedded Linux OS, based on Midori Linux. And their hardware looks like this - http://fastolfe.net/2006/iopener/

Dan Alexandru # 22. March 2007, 14:22

I wonder how they store the data in this local, offline, password-protected web application. They mention everything is read only.

Opera 9 requires almost 10 megabytes of disk space

Do they use a streamlined Opera distribution (no XSLT, IRC, Mail, etc) ?

UPDATE: They use a touchscreen toolkit for web applications and migrating to an Open Medical Record System

WhineWhine # 22. March 2007, 15:57

Opera 9 requires almost 10 megabytes of disk space

Where did this comment come from?

Dan Alexandru # 22. March 2007, 16:00

Saito's http://www.baobabhealth.org/tag/baobab-linux

haertzi # 22. March 2007, 17:11

More people should fight against HIV. Great!

Vic zaizai # 22. March 2007, 18:20

Vic zaizai http://www.my.opera.com/nhipsongtre

dɹɐzılpǝkɔıw ɐʞɐ ɹǝɥgɐllɐg lǝbɐsı # 22. March 2007, 19:55

you beautiful people!!!!

Vic zaizai # 22. March 2007, 20:48

hello i'm from Vietnam .Nice to meet you!!!

Khadra Warsame Penh Neang # 22. March 2007, 23:32

I knew when I First Joined the My Opera Community that the Folks Behind My Opera Community was Compassionate by Develope a Browser for Mobile Phones But Now You Guys and Girls at My Opera have Once again Showed the Entire World How Compassionate you All are by Supporting Yet Another Groups of Peoples in Needs Just Wanted to Say You All Do a Great Job Keep up the Wonderful Amazing and Splendid Work All Together

Mike McKay # 23. March 2007, 07:02

Thanks for all of the support and encouraging comments. I can answer some of the questions about how the OS works and how save data.

So we have these touchscreen computers with 16MB of flash disk space. We have a read only image of our OS, which when compressed just barely fits into that 16MB - Opera does take up the majority of that space.

When it boots, the image is expanded into the 32MB of memory. The OS is basically bare bones Linux with Opera. Opera is set to start in full screen mode and points at a local web server. The local web server runs a ruby on rails application that generates the pages and stores the data in a mysql database. The pages are simple html forms with a layer of javascript on top of it that we call the touchscreen toolkit. Basically it takes every <input> tag in a form, and creates a full screen div for it, with an on screen keyboard for data entry.

Let me know if anybody has any more questions.

Miss Kimbers # 23. March 2007, 09:28

Great stuff!

berfo # 23. March 2007, 11:30

sılav bawer

Jadd # 23. March 2007, 13:29

Excellent! It's great to see technology put to good use.

compost-komponistene # 24. March 2007, 09:56

So what is Opera's contribution here? Is Baobab a paying customer, or has Opera actually given something to the organization free of charge and is providing support and development as well?

curious

supertomah # 24. March 2007, 11:18

Opera provides the licenses for free

Uwe aka JaDa # 26. March 2007, 01:52

To get those Projects successful it is very Important to support the Projects! Everybody can help, just "move your butt"!

This companie has nothing to with baobab - Directory Tree Analyzer! I was first thinking about they are from the opensource commudity!

Originally posted by "JaDa's Info about the original baobab opensource project":

Baobab is an application to analyse directory trees in any Gnome environment. Baobab can easily scan either the whole filesystem tree, or a specific user-requested directory branch (local or remote). It also includes a complete file-search functionality and auto-detects in real-time any changes made to your home directory as far as any mounted/unmounted device. Baobab also provides a full graphical treemap window for each selected folder.

This name "baobab" confused me! I am thinking to much opensource