In Haiti, RFID Tracks Drinking Water

The system currently includes 35,000 RFID-enabled buckets for drinking water, and Kaye says he has funding from Nokia to expand the program to another 100 phones. The long-term plan, he indicates, is to provide 200 phones.

NRC's Joseph Kaye

To date, Ritter says, the system is working well. The data returned from technicians' mobile phones indicates which households are being visited, the results of the water tests, and the quantity of chlorine being used. Unlike the manual paper method, the RFID solution provides that information reliably and in near real time, so that all details are provided and legible (as the handwritten paperwork might not have been). In the future, he hopes DSI can use this more reliable data for analytics to determine, for example, which families might not be using the chlorine properly, and might thus require further education in how to utilize the system, or more frequent visits from technicians.

"Really, we're just now getting it all off the ground," Ritter states. "What RFID adds is a way to verify visits were done, and hopefully be able to provide feedback to families and community health workers," by alerting those families or communities that their chlorine use is incorrect. This would be based on analytics that he hopes DSI will be able to conduct with the data over the coming months. What's more, because the RFID system saves technician labor time (since they no longer need to fill out paperwork), Ritter hopes to eventually increase the number of households that each technician manages.

Kaye says he would like to see the solution expanded to other parts of the world, where it could be used to monitor water testing or other health- or safety-related functions that are accomplished in remote locations. At present, he is seeking a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand the system.