How Can Nigerian Health Tech Startups Build Sustainable Businesses?

Health Meets Tech

Between the 30th of June and 2nd of July, medical doctors, software developers, graphic designers, business development guys and many others gathered at the Co-creation Hub in Yaba, Lagos for a hackathon called "Health Meets Tech" which was organized by a partnership of Digital Health Nigeria, EpiAfric and Facebook, and covered by the Nigeria Health Watch. Throughout the 3-day period 5 different teams, each comprising of medical doctors and other healthcare workers, software developers, graphic designers, business people and so on, worked on an idea that would leverage technology to improve an aspect of healthcare in Nigeria. I joined the program on the second and final day during which I went round to interact with each of the teams on what they were building. My interaction focused on the healthcare problem each team was trying to solve; whether this healthcare problem was a recurring pain point for the target market; the willingness of the target market to pay for the solution that was being built to address the healthcare problem; whether the business is for profit or a social enterprise; and the sustainability of the model on which the business will be built.

This Technology Could Solve the Climate Change Problem by Generating Low-Carbon Fuels from Sunlight.

Carbon Emission at the heart of  Climate Change.
Image Credit to GeekSnack

Like it or not, most of the world people depends on crude oil and its products and other heavy carbon-emitting fossil fuels such as coal for one of the most important needs in life-energy (from petrol and diesel for cars and other vehicles through gas for power plants to generate electricity for cities to other fuel products used in many other dimensions). Every day hundreds of millions of litres of gas and other related fuels are burnt in one way or the other to meet this basic need for energy. While the basic need, energy, is being met, the basic need of our environment -including the atmosphere of which the ozone layer is part; the water bodies; and the green lands--which demands moderate waste output from us, that is within its recycling capacity, were neglected from the very beginning.

However, the world started to realise the consequences of this neglect and efforts to make amends went into motion. That was when global consolidations to tackle the problem of climate change began to take shape in various parts of the world and from various strata of the society--from the political line, through various social groups to the academia and various research and development industry groups. Significant progress began to materialise in the form of environment-conscious government policies; a change of attitude towards energy use by people in various parts of the world; and technological adventures and innovations and inventions from the academia and research and development industry groups. We began to hear about less carbon-emitting fuel alternatives such as biomass fuel; then came the green energy in the form solar electricity that emitted zero carbon into the atmosphere. These breakthroughs found their way into the various purposes that were being served by the heavy carbon-emitting fossil fuels and the result was solar powered homes and communities; electric cars and trains and power plants that generate electricity with biomass fuel.

Even with all this, the dependence on fossil fuels did not witness a marginal decline. But the need to meet the need of the environment began to experience unprecedented surge. Global conferences by the world's political representatives on addressing climate change issues became almost an annual mandate. However, the truth is that the fossil fuel industry is a multi-billion, if not multi-trillion, dollar one; and a complete shift from it to green energy will be almost impossible (though there are already campaigns going on in several UK Universities and institutions for divestment from future fossil fuel), the least reason being that most of the green energy alternatives have limitations such as low conversion ratio and low carrying capacity--conversion of solar energy into electrical energy is at a less than 2% rate and I'm yet to learn of a solar powered heavy machinery factory. And secondly, countries like the US and Russia are ever expanding their technologies in exploring shale gas from rocks and natural gas in the Arctic region of the planet respectively, never minding the fact that about 80% of the remaining coal reserves, 50% of gas and 30% oil must remain unburnt if the world is to remain below the 2ºC global warming beyond which catastrophes may start manifesting.

How We Can Avoid Social Media Distraction When In A Serious Business

Online distraction while studying.
Image credit to Connections Academy.

Often times while in a lecture (particularly if the lecture is boring) or when I'm about to work on something important (and which may require I stay online to get some resources) or I'm about to read, I have found myself drifting away from these serious businesses towards the coral reefs of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to check my notifications, who re-tweeted or favorited my tweets, or who liked my pictures. Before I realize what is happening, I'm spending hours on these social reefs, drowning into the colorful distractions and forgetting what I had planned to work on.

I know a lot of people experience this too; and I have read so many pieces of advice and strategies by different people on how to stay focused and keep away from online distraction when working: strategies such as switch off your phone or its internet access; turn off your email notifications; go to the library without your phone; and so on. But the world has changed in such a way that we now have a digital duplicate of our daily life: the Internet is an inevitable part of our lives. However, we should not allow this technology ruin us in the form of preventing us from concentrating on daily activities that are key to our growth and development and that of the society in which we live. This resolve requires we look for smart ways to stay focused on our work while online.

The Kudoso router. Image credit to
Kudoso

And one of the smart ways I came across is the strategy designed by Rob Irizarry, a technology expert. Seeing how technology--too much time on TV and on the internet--has taken over his children's lives, with a potential of health problems in the future from sedentary life before screens to the internet, he decided to design a system, he called  Kudoso, (software and hardware) that limits their access to internet TV and other sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and awards them time to these sites based on points they accumulate by completing other engaging activities such as home chores, school work, lessons on educational sites like Khan Academy and physical exercise such as running. Hence, kids will not be able to access online TV sites such as Netflix; social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on; and other entertainment based sites-without having worked for the access points. And these access points have time limits on each of these sites, so that these kids don't spend forever on them. The Kudoso system works as an app that can be installed on home internet routers and also comes as a router preinstalled with the software.

Rob Irizarry, inventor of Kudoso

While this is ingenious, it is aimed at kids mainly. What about the teenagers and adults who spent most of their time outside the house-in school, at the office and alone in their own apartment-with their smartphones always around them. This age bracket is the most productive in the population, faced with so many tasks to accomplish; but could be under-performing because of distraction from social media when at work: in fact, a survey carried out by Salary.com last year showed that 69% of employees in the US spent time on non-work related websites each day in office, with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram taking the largest chunks of the total time wasted, and costing these employees' companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Little wonder some business organisations in Nigeria block access to these social media sites because of their impact on workers' productivity at work. But we need other options too--to augment the effort inside and outside the office. And one thing we must note is that whatever options that will emerge must involve our own conscious voluntary effort to help them help us stay focused and undistracted from online distractions while working.

One more option is to develop a mobile application. But hey wait; this is an idea (others might have thought about it too) I'm throwing to app developers and the likes out there (I'm yet to learn how to code; but learning how to code I have promised myself: it may not be now, but I must surely learn how to code). So let's go back to the application. What if there is a mobile application that can block access to all social media sites and apps and uses an algorithm to block access to other entertainment based sites (unless you are working on something entertainment-related). The app will have a Work Mode and a Leisure Mode. For instance, if you are about to work on a project, you open the app on your smartphone, or computer (a desktop version could be made too) and put it in the Work Mode. Once in this Mode, you can choose the minimum period you intend to work, or you can leave it on unlimited period (it will give you the option of easily switching to the Leisure Mode after a minimum period of time). If you're going for a lecture or to work, the app will use your phone's GPS navigation to pop up reminder that you're heading for the location of your work (it will have a feature that enables input of workplace, lecture venues and so on via map and GPS) and should switch to the Work Mode to avoid distraction, such that once the lecturer comes into the lecture theatre or you hit the office and start work, you can choose to switch to the Work Mode. You can also choose to synchronize the app with your phone's reminder or to-do-list of activities so that it gives you the option of staying undistracted from online nuisances while accomplishing your tasks.

Someone out there is already asking whether I can't switch back to Leisure Mode and float on the stream of social media networks and the likes midway into my work. Like I said earlier, its functionality depends, to a large extent, on our conscious effort to stay away from online nuisances during our work periods. However, the app, which I call UnDistract if I were to develop it, would be designed such that reverting to the Leisure Mode before the minimum period of time set by default, depending on the activity, is spent , will be very tedious, involving answering series of questions, covering science, technology, music, arts and so on, drawn from the internet such that the user may stop midway: and the time spent trying to revert will count as that spent on the actual work because the user has got involved in some form of mental work. The activity-based minimum time frame feature will start working after the user has accomplished so many tasks spending the minimum time which can be manually set on the app, and the application's algorithm has gathered enough data to allocate a minimum time frame for any input activity.

I will keep on saying it--such an application will only be effective if we consciously want to stay undistracted while working: I can as well uninstall it after a few days if it seems to impose restrictions to my undisciplined freedom of deviation when I'm working. But would doing so be for my own good?

Warning: if anyone out there finally develops this app, be sure to give me 5 % of the revenue when it explodes with success, else I will sue you the same way the Winklevoss brothers sued Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook became a household name.

Ebola virus and the Future of Containing very Highly Infectious Diseases.

The Ebola virus. Image credit to
the BBC

Now Africa is faced with a new threat in the form of the Ebola virus; the death toll is rising in the three African countries-Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone-where the outbreaks occcurred this year. The Ebola virus, part of the haemorrhagic fever viruses, is extremely contagious and has a fatality rate of about 90%, meaning that 9 out every 10 people with the infection will likely not survive; though the rate so far has been about 50% and 60%. First reported in 1976 along the Ebola River in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), there was no outbreak between 1980 and 1993; some outbreaks occurred in some years between 1994 and 2012; this year's outbreak is the worst since it was discovered in 1976.

And the dawning of this reality has evoked in me questions about how the world, especially Africa, will position itself to tackle future occurrences (probably not the Ebola virus, as it may be eradicated if we get all the necessary public health measures in place) of new viral diseases that may be far more infectious than Ebola and Lassa viral infections.

A few months back, a case of Lassa fever was reported in the Paediatrics department of our teaching hospital, the University College Hospital, Ibadan; we had what we call Grand Round, a weekly seminar on pressing health issues, where this Lassa fever case was discussed in full details: it was at this seminar that I learnt that the one-use, disposable protective suit won by the health personnel managing a patient with the disease costs about 20,000 naira (about $150) which majority of Nigerian patients, who by the way do not have health insurance, can't afford (as about 3 or 4 of this suit will be required daily by the health workers, who would take shifts, to manage the infected quarantined patient-that's between $450 and $600).

While the best option now in the current case of Ebola virus is to provide excellent public health measures (there is hope as the World Bank has pledged $200 million, in addition to the $100 million dollars the World Health Organization and the three affected African countries jointly committed, to fight the outbreak in the affected African countries, including Nigeria) such as various forms of isolation units in hospitals to manage cases of admitted patients who present with the flu-like symptoms that have been associated with the Ebola virus infection, and isolating and monitoring those who brought the patient to the hospital (the treatment centre should also have the constitutional licence to isolate and monitor the patient's family members who came into contact with him or her after the onset of the symptoms); this outbreak has bared the need to establish and fund a multidisciplinary medical research facility in Africa to, among many other research duties, have a department of Unknown Highly Infectious Diseases. This department will be staffed by African medical research experts in Africa and in the diaspora who will collaborate with renowned medical experts in top research institutions around the world to quickly get samples from patients with suspected infectious, but unknown, disease for analysis of the possible cause and the firm establishment of various transmission modes of such a disease; and also to begin search for potential therapeutic (including a cure) modalities based on the accumulated knowledge from the various experimental studies that would have been carried out on the viruses.

In addition, the question of the ancestry and evolution of that new infectious disease-causing agent must be answered. Though this is a more demanding task, success at it will give the medical world insight into how for instance the Ebola virus and Lassa fever virus evolved (underwent mutations) to acquire their infectivity and virulence (the capacity of the viruses to cause the disease in people after infecting them) if there was a time in the ancestry of the viruses when they were not infectious; or even if they were infectious right from their first generation-how have they adapted and improved on their infectivity and virulence? It will also help in making quicker decisions in terms of the best path to follow in designing a treatment protocol if a virus in the same family, or a new strain of the same virus emerges in the future to cause disease in humans. This is getting more demanding and would mean spending more time with the virus in the lab, right? There's a possibility of a test tube containing blood samples of the virus slipping and spilling on to the researcher handling it; there could be an accidental needle pricking while trying to inject experimental mice or rats with the virus (to study immune system response to the virus for possible vaccine development); and a researcher dare not casually leave the lab to take some snacks, without following long protocols involved in removing his or her protective suit, no matter how hungry he or she may be. Is there a way to totally avoid the possible unforeseen hazard of infection that these researchers face in the lab while maintaining the same quality and quantity of research they will be doing on these very highly Infectious disease-causing viruses? A way that will enable a researcher to easily have lunch during work? I guess the solutions are in the future; but the future, I believe, is already here with us. And this future is where the extra collaborators from the US, Japan and other countries with very advanced robotics technologies will come in.

The da Vinci Surgical System. Image credit to
Robot Surgery.

For over a decade now, robots have been designed and modified to carry out surgery both in the battlefield and in the operating theatre under full control of human surgeons who operate them remotely, giving rise to the concept of the term Robo-Surgeon. The most popular and widely used of these robo-surgery technologies is the da Vinci Surgical System developed by Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, California. This Surgical System comprises of a surgeon's console (a room-like compartment where the human surgeon sits very comfortably, equipped with a high-performance 3-D vision camera and master control like video game pads), a patient operating table with four interactive robotic arms and a collection of surgical instruments called EndoWrist instruments. To carry out a major surgery, the surgeon sits in the console that is separated from the operating theatre in which the patient is lying on the operating table of the Surgical System, and through the high-performance 3-D vision camera system uses the master controls of the console to direct the robotic arms to carry out intricate surgical tasks with very high level of precision, leaving behind very minimal scar. This application of robotics in surgery can be replicated in the experimental studies of very highly infectious agents like the Ebola virus and other future viruses and bacteria.

A prototype of a robot that can be telecontrolled
remotely by a human operator. Image credit to
The Indian Express

The future I imagine here will have the robotic arms replaced by more human-looking robots (something more like a Humanic from the TV science fiction series, Extant), but whose entire functions (movements, vision and decisions in the lab) will be under the total control of the researchers in the consoles outside the high bio-security labs in which these infectious samples are kept. Hence, the researchers will not need to be in these high bio-security labs in person, only their virtual presence, but they will be able to carry out their research works as though they were still in the labs; and moreover these Robo-Scientists, as I would prefer to call them, will be equipped with digital note-recording system to enable the human scientists controlling them to document the protocols involved in the research, any findings and results in the course of the research, and easily share them immediately with other labs around the world doing the same emergency research. This will speed up the development of therapeutic agents as results emerge from the work and are re-confirmed by other labs doing the same work in the shortest possible time. One more advantage: no human will be exposed to the infectious agents, only the Robo-Scientists and who can easily be sterilized. Sounds like science fiction, right? But the future is already here. And as the hundreds of millions of dollars committed to fight the Ebola virus outbreak begin to do its job; as the resolutions of the emergency meeting, in Geneva Switzerland, by the global health experts of the  World Health Organization (click on the link for the resolutions of the meeting) on drafting new measures to tackle the Ebola outbreak, held between Wednesday and Thursday, are made known to the public--I strongly hope the medical and corporate worlds will share in this future I envision and begin to set in motions the wheels that will contain the emergence of very highly infectious diseases, such as Ebola, in the future.

Bypassing Needle-Dependent Insulin Therapy in Diabetic Patients.

Modern Digitized Insulin Pump
Image credit to Tandem Diabetes Care.

Two weeks ago, we had a counselling session in the clinic for children with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (a type of diabetes that totally depends on taking an artificial form of the normal insulin produced in the body to be able to stay healthy and alive) when I rotated through the Endocrinology Unit of our Paediatrics department; these patients came along with their family members, and a pharmaceutical company that manufactures artificial insulin was also invited. Our consultant endocrinologist headed the counselling session, educating and re-educating these paediatric patients and their families on the management of their medical condition--diabetes--through lifestyle modification (taking the appropriate food, drinks and so on) and appropriate use of the injectable insulin: how many times to inject themselves with insulin in a day; on ensuring they take some insulin shots before meals; and so on.

Digitized Insulin Pump linked to
a Health Management Software on
a PC for patients and Physicians.
Image credit to Tandem Diabetes Care

These children, I must say, were learning from these periodic sessions evidenced by how they gave very detailed accounts of what they have learnt and the risks of not adhering to the guidelines given to them. But worried me as I sat among my fellow medical students that day was the constant pricking these children would have to endure every day to take their insulin because the only insulin therapy still available in Nigeria currently is the injectable insulin (variations exist such as the insulin syringes and the insulin pen which the invited pharmaceutical company displayed and educated the patients on how to make use of). Aside this, even the insulin pumps (with all the newest modifications they have undergone) that are common in developed parts of the world still require the patient to insert the infusion set under the skin and carry it around (hence, the patient has to always be cautious about some activities in order not to disrupt the inserted infusion set of the pump which would dislodge the pump from the body and pose health risk to the patient).

Afrezza Technosphere Inhalable
Insulin. Image credit to Mannkind Corp.

The highlighted worry above is not just the problem faced by diabetic patients in Nigeria alone, but the world over. Though, research (such as artificial pancreas, pancreas transplant and so on) is intense to address this major problem of invasive insulin self administration, something immediate need to be done to reduce the need for needle pricking several times a day by people with diabetes, especially Type 1 (people with this type of diabetes may die if the level of sugar in their blood goes far above or below a certain level, and hence a standby insulin at all times is very essential). And it seems that there is hope (though for now not for Nigerians with diabetes) as the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA (the US version of Nigeria's NAFDAC), on the 27th of June this year approved an inhalable form of insulin called Afrezza designed by the US pharmaceutical company Mannkind Corporation, after the FDA advisory panel met in April this year and over 90% of the members voted in favour of the inhalable insulin, following data gathered from the clinical trials confirming its efficacy was carried out in over 3000 patients with both Type 1 and 2 diabetes (Afrezza is not the first attempt at making inhalable insulin: the pharmaceutical company Pfizer did come up with its own inhalable insulin called Exubera developed by a company Nektar Therapeutics far back in 2005 but the product was pulled out of the market in 2007 because of the lung problems that ensued in some users, the high cost and lack of benefit over the injected insulin). The FDA has mandated that Afrezza be subjected to post-market study to monitor possible long-term outcomes, one of which is the possibility of some patients having lung cancer from the use of the product.

The Afrezza inhalable insulin uses what its manufacturer calls the Technosphere technology (particles in
 powder form made up of biologically non reactive chemicals that carry the artificial insulin to the lungs once inhaled, and they completely separate from the insulin in the lungs to allow rapid absorption into the blood) to deliver inhaled insulin to the lungs where the insulin is absorbed rapidly into the blood, reaching maximum level between 15 and 20 minutes, hence preventing any imminent sugar overload of the blood, especially after meals. Afrezza inhalable insulin is contraindicated in patients who smoke or have asthma, or chronic obstructive lung diseases such as bronchiectasis.

The major setback though is that the inhalable insulin cannot replace the long-acting insulin needed by Type 1 diabetic patients, meaning that these patients still need to inject insulin, but probably once a day, while using the inhalable insulin before or a few minutes into their meals. Now, this is where something can also be done, maybe not immediate.

Women have the option of using the implantable contraceptives (which are inserted surgically, under local anaesthesia so that no pain is felt, deep into the skin of the inner part of the upper arm or thigh) which deliver artificial oestrogen and progesterone at rates required to prevent pregnancy for at least 3 years. Something similar, I think, can be done in the case of insulin: we can have insulin implants designed to release insulin at rates required for the basal level in these diabetic patients. This will replace the long-acting insulin injection and last for probably up to 3 years before it could be replaced; there is still pricking, but this time it is probably once in 3 years and then it is done under local anaesthesia, so the patient would not feel any pain. I believe work is ongoing on something like this.

Smart Home--Get Anything You Need with a Wave of the Hand.

Hand gesture control of your Smart Home. Image credit to
MIT Media Lab

In my last update I talked about how everything from goods to services is racking up innovative functionalities to earn the credibility of attaching the buzzword 'smart' to its name.

The concept of smart home has been around for some time now; but it has mainly focused on small-scale stuffs in the home like heaters with sensors; doors with smart security system; electronic monitoring of your house energy consumption; the use of green energy alternatives in cooking; and so on. But now the concept has been taken very farther up the ladder to involve the house itself that houses the home, being inspired by problems like scarcity of land in the urban areas, portability, mobility and environmental pollution. At the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, architects, civil engineers, city planners and other scientists are living their imagination of the future of housing.The MIT Media Lab arm of the School of Architecture and Planning has designed prototypes of what I will call super smart homes. One of the most interesting of these projects is the CityHome project.

The CityHome RoboWall Module. Image credit to
MIT Media Lab

Hand-gestured bedroom for some rest. MIT Media Lab

The CityHome project depends on a smart modular technology known as the RoboWall to provide the smart home experience. In simple terms, you rent a small room about 18 square metres and fit it with your customized RoboWall module--which is a transformable wall system that incorporates furniture, entertainment systems, kitchen setup, office equipment, library, storage, a home gym, home lighting, toilet and bathroom, and any other stuff that is found in a home--and then get whatever you want with a gesture of your hand: if you want to entertain guests you make the gesture and RoboWall transforms into the perfect sitting room for your guests; this sitting room can later be instructed by voice to reconfigure to a kitchen for cooking which can then be motioned to transform to a gym for a workout session, a bedroom for rest, an office suite or library for some serious business, and when you want to send some brown dudes down the pipe you gesture out the rest room . The RoboWall also enables two  purpose-serving sections like the kitchen opening into the living space if you want to shuttle between the two when you are busy with some chores and cooking at the same time (an analogue of multitasking which I call MULTICHORING); or the kitchen can be gestured to close off if you just needed to grab a pack of cookies and a bowl of ice cream from the fridge once and focus on an interesting TV program. This smart functionality of gesture-controlled home reconfiguration and movement makes it possible to live a 74-square metre apartment experience in an 18-square metre space with the RoboWall.

CityHome enables you to do MULTICHORING,
including sending brown dudes down the pipe.

Some serious business.

The CityHome project is still in the stage of prototype, making it a futuristic solution for the already emerging problems in mega cities around the world such as scarcity of building space; overcrowding; climate change from carbon emission due, in part, to high energy consumption in our homes whose waste is not recycled; and so on. But even when its need becomes utmost in the future, it will likely, initially, be very expensive for the average income earner hoping to get an apartment of his or hers. However, with time, I think it will come to stay like smartphones just that there may be something like HIGH-END SMART HOME AND LOW-END SMART HOME MODULES; hence, the majority gets to own a smart home modular apartment, but with some having less functionality than the others.

The MIT media Lab. Image credit to MIT media Lab

A Software Program to Bill our Calls based on the Quality of Connected Call.

Poor network reception and poor call quality. Image credit to Today's Telegraph

There is no doubt that mobile telecommunication has in numerous ways expanded the growth and development of our society and made our world a global village. In fact, the great impact is very well felt in the developing parts of the world like Africa and Nigeria where I live.

But in the developing world, here in Nigeria, while mobile telecom has expanded our economy, some elements are emerging that are insidiously denigrating the good impact of mobile telecom emergence: an occasional decline in the quality of call and mobile internet service offered by the mobile telecom companies operational in the country. Peripheral to the core of this occasional poor service delivery is the interruption in call by the "one minute remaining" voice that for some seconds (and which is money you've already paid and can't be refunded) actually prevent you from hearing the person you're conversing with-you have to ask him or her to repeat what was said during the lost seconds (money).

The people of Nigeria have been complaining, but on a very weak scale, concerning the 'peripheral problem' I talked about. But the bigger problem we have with these mobile telecom companies is the frequent abysmal quality of voice calls which I can estimate virtually every Nigerian on prepaid plan has and will keep on experiencing if nothing is done about it (this issue does not look like a litigable one in Nigeria for now). It is so annoying to call a number, get connected but for almost a minute of this call you and your caller can't hear each other-- instead you hear this sea roaring noise, all because of bad network reception. Technically speaking, it may not be the fault of these mobile telecom companies all the time and hence they may not be blamed at all times. However, the rule is that one must get the high quality value for money one paid for any service, and hence the customers subscribed to these telecom companies should not be the one suffering from this occasional decline in quality of calls by spending money and not getting the quality service. That is an economic waste both to the customer and the country as a whole: there about 120 million mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria as at June last year according to the Nigerian Communications Commission; estimating that 1% of this number experiences this problem for one second everyday, thats 1.2 million subscribers multiplied by the call rate for one second (which 0.15 naira for intra-network calls) and we have N180,000;  and for 30 days it is N5.4 million; this is the lowest threshold I set but I know it could be higher than this. This estimated threshold statistics shows that annually, Nigerian mobile phone subscribers practically throw about N64.8 million into the fire.

Normally, calls are billed at a per unit time rate in most places. This billing method is okay by me if the quality of the call is at its best and which should be because customers paid for it. But because of the occasional problems in quality that callers may experience, and which is never their fault at all times, and the fact that they must get quality for the money they paid, I'm proposing that a new factor be brought into the phone call billing equation. A new software can be developed that will use a special algorithm to calibrate levels of quality in voice call which will be integrated into the per unit time billing algorithm. Technically, the two factors-time and quality of the call (based on network reception at both users' ends)-will be mathematically represented by two waves on a graph. When network reception is good, the call-quality wave fizzles out and the caller is normally billed per unit time; if the network reception and consequently call quality is bad, two things can happen---either there is a freeze in the timing of the call (in the case where the two connected callers are not hearing each other) and no money will be charged the caller during this period until the reception returns to normal when the timing will be unfrozen; or in the case where the call quality is mildly to moderately poor, the time wave aligns with the call-quality wave and the caller is billed based on the call quality alone. The Nigerian Communications Commission can supervise the development of this program and constitutionally mandate telecom operators to adopt it into their call billing operations.

This new, innovative proposal, if taken up and developed, will further guarantee that customers get the full and high quality value for the services they pay for. Last year, the Nigerian Communications Commission fined the three major mobile telecom companies in Nigeria for abysmal service delivery, one of which is what I have just talked about. But the money fined these companies will not come back to the subscribers who did not get the value for it in the first place, and hence did not record a corresponding socioeconomic growth and development. Technology is here to enable us devise innovative ways of solving any problems that arise in our everyday lives. In Nigeria, mobile phone subscribers often do not get the full value for the services they paid for; this is a socioeconomic problem--and my proposal is one of the novel ways in which it can be solved.

Smart Education Curriculum: Bringing the Extra-educational Means through which technology trends into the Classroom.

Smart Education in South Korea. Image credit to Advance Technology Korea

I can't remember who I was discussing with some time ago but one thing I got from the conversation was this in my own paraphrase: people born in this technology age cannot do without or (get to the very highest level in harnessing their full potentials) without technology, be it in their jobs, startup companies and, which is the focus if this piece, education.

Many developed and developing countries' governments and private corporations are making efforts in bringing technology into the school setting-by providing tablet computers stuffed with books and 3-D interactive materials for the primary and secondary school students; the higher institutions are not left out of this. And this has greatly helped the students to develop their potentials in their school works and projects.

While these successes are being recorded, I still believe there are much more rooms for great improvements. Yes tablet computers with all the materials have been provided (they are helping because we use our PCs and ipads to play games, watch movies and listen to music; and hence there is a very high tendency we'll always study and work on our school projects using them). However, having incorporated the tools of technology into our education (though here in Nigeria we still have a long way to go), we're neglecting the means through which technology is permeating its way into the favorites and choices of the everyday life of young people (the main segment of the society fully immersed in the educational institution).

But before I hit my target, I give an illustration. Here in Nigeria last year the universities' lecturers embarked on a 6-month long strike demanding as the major priority improved funding of the nation's universities which are owned by the government. After so many negotiations, the lecturers' body and the federal government of Nigeria signed an agreement in which the government endorsed to pump in #220 billion ($1.3 billion) annually for the next 5 years into the universities for massive infrastructural development and other upgradings. While I hailed this achievement, I discovered another problem (wahala in the Nigerian pidgin English): the hardware (the infrastructure of our universities) of the problem is being addressed, but nobody is talking about the software (the lecturers-I mean the way these lectures deliver their lectures to students).

In most Nigerian tertiary institutions, some lecturers, I'm sorry to say, are luddites (ludite from Ned Lud one of the workers who led a protest against the industrial revolution in factories in the early 19th century when machines were taking over the works done manually by workers) and old fashioned in even the knowledge base of their specialty: imagine a lecturer detesting the use of electronic boards and projectors in teaching students; students using their phones and tablet computers to read, reminding them that in their own days they carried their big books to the libraries and read them from cover to cover. Another set of lecturers would teach students with notes they made in the 1980s and 90s and expect them to give them back in exam exactly what they taught them: if any student dared including new stuffs and updates as regards the particular course such a student might fail the course. And so this is the wahala I saw after the strike issue. 

Smart Education: personalizing teaching to student needs. Image credit to Smarttech

The world is changing and the knowledge database of each discipline is expanding at an incredibly exponential rate because of the rapid advances in science and technology. And for the disciples of each of these areas of knowledge to keep up, the tools of technology and the various means through which these tools are used (especially in the extra-school setting) are indispensable and must be incorporated into the academic learning setting.

Efforts are already being made in this direction (educational games and so on). Another strong extra-school means through which tech tools are voraciously being used is the social media-Facebook, Twitter and so on. This can be incorporated into the educational curriculum (but how many teachers and lecturers will agree to this at least in my country, Nigeria?.....That's the problem). However, some teachers, not in Nigeria unfortunately, are already experimenting this idea. According to a report on the New York Times, some high school teachers in Iowa, US are already experimenting with incorporating social media into classroom teaching and discussion in which students use Twitter to contribute to discussions on various topics in class, and some of them have recorded increased participation of their students in such discussions because social media (in this case Twitter) which appeals to them has been infused into what otherwise was a boring topic to them. The report also highlights some universities which have developed their own on-campus social media forums for academic discussions.

Though there are many critics of this approach, and it is understandable as there are tendencies of distraction, but it is still being experimented on and can be improved on. One such way is to configure such forums to monitor and indicate when a student has strayed off the subject of discussion ONLY DURING THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION; it will possibly get better with time. And other social media like Facebook can be incorporated by schools and universities; and universities can develop their own online discussion forums linked to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks to be used as part of some classroom teaching and discussion.

I hope universities here in Nigeria can embrace this modality as one of its teaching methods. There are signs they will with time; one sign, though it is still at the student level, is the social education network Acada360 co-founded by Mr. Godswill Oyor, a Law graduate of my school, the University of Ibadan. Acada360, I will say is still evolving, is where students in Nigerian universities can upload their notes taken by them in class and get rewards when other students download them. I got to know about this site today on Instagram. Social media technology has come to stay and rapidly advance and our school curriculum must capitalize on its positive prospects.