DIYWWYG
(Do it yourself with what you’ve got)
"Kabarole!" doesn’t need a lot of things to run. Let’s start with what you don’t need.
This is what you don’t need:
- You definitly don’t need an expensive consultant from the US or Europe
(who will most probably eat valuable resources and produce useless crap which will stop functioning after one year)
- You don’t need to buy MS Access, Excel, Windows 2000, XP, 95, 97 etc.
(which will most probably eat valuable resources and produce useless crap and stop functioning after one year)
- You don’t need Pentiums, Gigabytes, ISDN, Servers etc.
(which will most probably eat valuable resources and produce useless crap and stop functioning after one year)
This is what you need (Minimum requirements):
- You need a computer with the following hardware:
- needed: preferably an Intel 386 processor or higher I even had it running on a 286, but it’s getting quite slow.
- needed: around 4 MB RAM. That’s what I tried, but you should get along with less.
- needed: a harddisk with at least 5 MB available space or more - this depends on how big your forms are, and how many health units you observe etc.
- needed: a graphic card, at least capable of VGA mode.
- needed: a mouse - there is no way around it.
- optional: a floppy drive - although you could still get along with a transfer cable and ‘laplink’ or ‘fx’ for installing, the drive is mainly needed to look for archivated files.
- optional: printer for directly printing the reports,
- optional: tape-streamer, zip-drive or cd-rom for security copies.
- fancy: scanner for scanning a district map.
From what I have seen, the mentioned equipment is just sleeping in most districts now, because it isn’t capable of running up-to-date software. With “Kabarole!” you can still use these machines as
thin-client data-entry workplaces.
- Your computer should have the following software
- needed: MS-DOS with mouse.com (or another mouse driver). I tried it with MS-DOS versions 5 and 6, butt it should also run with FreeDOS, DR-DOS etc.
- optional: EpiInfo 5 or 6, if you want to design your own data entry forms on the same computer. But you can also design them somewhere else and install them on the
”Kabarole!” computer. EpiInfo can also serve as an analysis tool for graphs etc.
- optional: Windows 3.1 with Paintbrush, if you want to create the district map on the same computer. But you can also draw it on another computer and copy it to the “Kabarole!” computer.
- fancy: Spreadsheets, Epi 2000, Statistics Software etc. for further analysis.
Concluding that means: with “Kabarole!” you can set up a computerized HMIS at little or no cost, since the necessary hardware is normally already there and no longer used, and the needed software
can also be obtained at little or no cost.
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