Digital pen reports disease outbreaks in seconds

Livestock farmers in Kenya are sighing with relief after introduction of a digital pen technology used by veterinary officers to immediately report to the capital about any disease outbreak.

The innovative tool which reports about an outbreak to the capital in ten seconds is aimed at curbing the losses of millions of shillings worth of livestock, which can occur when lengthy manual reporting processes make it difficult to contain an outbreak on time.

After witnessing farmers lose the source of their livelihoods to deadly notifiable diseases that could be contained on time if the detection was reported timeously, stakeholders in the veterinary sector set out on a mission to cub these misfortunes.

Dr. Kahariri Samuel, one of the brains behind the innovation noted: “Time is everything when it comes to curbing of deadly diseases like Rift Valley fever or Anthrax and therefore the faster a disease is detected and reported, then the less it may spread hence less economic losses.” He added that initially they were relying on paper and pen which not only took long to reach the capital but was also tedious as the officers at the grassroots had to make several copies and rounds of visits from rural areas to Nairobi to deliver the reports a process that took over three weeks.

The old trend has greatly been revolutionised with the Digital Pen Technology which reports about an outbreak to the capital in the shortest time span. The technology entails use of a digital pen, digital paper and an internet enabled phone. The digital paper has commands that are interlinked with the pen. It has a start and end command boxes. When one ticks the start box then the Bluetooth in the pen is activated and the pen will note anything that will be written on the paper using the camera on it and when the end box is clicked then the information is automatically stored in the pen’s memory chip.  The veterinary officer just writes on the digital pare normally and then the details are recorded simultaneously by the camera on the pen to the memory chip

source: www.biztechafrica.com