Online Lecture: Myths About the Developing World
I recently stumbled across a link to a lecture posted online by Hans Rosling, who is a Professor of International Health at the world-renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. His specialty is mining and presenting data from the United Nations in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. You can hear the lecture for yourself (If you have trouble with the link, try going to www.ted.com and following the menu to find this presentation).
What does this have to do with prosthetic and orthotic practice? Obviously, the needs in the developing world are massive and largely unmet due to the lack of trained CPOs. Starting to address this shortfall has been a major effort of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics for several decades and one that is beginning to show some very encouraging results. You can visit the new ISPO web site for more information about this very active international group.
In addition to the obvious tangible application to P&O, I believe Professor Rossling's approach to both data mining and to presenting this information in a manner that is effective at reaching the non-geek is a good model for the kinds of fundamental changes in the way we will look at P&O issues that will come in the future.
For more information on Professor Rosling's vision of data mining, visit his web site www.gapminder.org , which is part of the Google empire.