Innovations That Improve Lives: Minds in Action

Oerther, Sarah E

Monday, 18 November 2013

Sarah E Oerther, MSN, BSN, MEd, RN
Missouri EDGE, LLC, Rolla, MO
Daniel B Oerther, PhD, MS, BS, BA
Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO
Andrew Schriner, BS
PulaCloud, LLC, Rolla, MO

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to describe how job creation in the information economy ultimately improves community health.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to apply out-of-the-box thinking to create innovative solutions to community health challenges as a nurse.

The Whitehall studies of 1967 and 1985 strongly support the idea that income is directly tied to health (with all other items equal). Therefore, if one is interested in improvements in the health of an individual or a community, it follows that better economic opportunity would be one means of achieving a healthier population. While the distribution of direct aid has been performed for many years, there are countless reports questioning the positive impact of direct aid to alleviate poverty and improve health. Recently, access to the necessary capital to stimulate entrepreneurs has been explored as an alternative model for development. The Grameen Bank is a Nobel Peace Prize winning microfinance effort started in Bangladesh and used as a template for recent efforts such as Kiva.org.

The approach described in this presentation represents another, fundamentally different, yet perhaps more powerful approach to eradicate poverty and improve health. Direct access to international employment in the information economy through the field of human computation serves as the underlying objective of PulaCloud, Limited Liability Corporation. Employing a for-profit model, villagers are hired to complete repetitive tasks on a computer. These tasks can be easily completed by a human, yet are difficult to complete with current computer programs and hardware. By identifying important tasks that can be solved in this manner, PulaCloud links the minds of impoverished villagers with global jobs and a global income thereby eradicating extreme poverty by leaps and bounds.

This presentation will describe the results of two successful pilot projects completed in the past two years including an assessment of the expenditures of the villagers after they earned money from PulaCloud. The ultimate goal of this work is to demonstrate to nurses that alternative platforms exist to accomplish the care of community health through economic development.

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