In about a half hour, I’m headed on Continental Flight 308 to Houston, hopefully ending up in Lima at some point tonight. The plan as it stands now is to spend two months in Peru enjoying the summer and working on a few different projects.

The first destination is Arequipa, in southern Peru, to do research for Health Bridges International (HBI) on how the clinics serving the Alto Cayma catchment area can better coordinate efforts, share resources, and work together. The specialty I hope to bring is identifying ways in which communications technology (like a Google Group, WordPress blog, or SMS) can enhance collaboration. Wayne and I worked on a questionnaire a while back that will be implemented at a healthcare providers conference on Monday and Tuesday. Here are some of the questions we’ll be asking:

• What types of resources are you commonly lacking?
• Do you have internet access?
• Do check email regularly? How often?
• Are you interested in collaborating with other local clinics/ organizations?
• Would you be interested in sharing specialty consultations?
• Would you be interested in sharing supplies or resources?

We’ll be trying to keep it short, but I’d enjoy any and all feedback on the questions we’re asking, as well as ideas on how to connect clinics with limited resources.

Along with doing research for HBI, I’ll be doing interviews to gather information for MobilizeMRS, a project with Isaac Holeman and (hopefully) Lewis & Clark Direct Action. These interviews, which will probably be video too, will try to deduce:

• A solid use case for FrontlineSMS in the HBI clinic in Arequipa
• What different stakeholders think the project can do
• The organization of the community health workers network
• # of trips made per day by community health workers + doctors, average distance of each trip, and how they travel
• Access to electricity

Thanks to Josh Nesbit for feedback on the scope of this research.

At the end of January, I’ll be headed to Cajamarca to work on Oregon Direct Action’s water project in San Pablo, Peru.

More soon, I promise. Final boarding time now. If you’re going to down there at the same time, hit me up. I think I’d like to do a few weekend trips to get away from work. And an FYI for those of you that follow me on Twitter: I hope to tweet as I’m traveling around. Twitter no longer delivers international SMS, however, so the conversation might seem a bit one-sided at times. My apologies in advance.

Onward!