Today's observations in pictures:

Battle of the Bands: Nurses in Kamuzu Central Hospital's Children's Ward C, which is dedicated to therapeutic nutrition, compare the UNICEF-style MUAC band with the prototype we've created.

Paper Records: One of the driving forces behind implementing Baobab's patient-manage system in hospitals is to help reduce the problems associated with keeping paper records. Here we see the destination of many records that are only a few years old.

Rashid Demonstrates the X-Ray Process: One of the best-loved features of the Baobab system is its use with tracking and reporting on x-rays.

A great amount of work got done thanks to the help of everyone here. Below is the latest prototype. It's printed on paper, but another version is making the rounds that was printed on indestructible HP LaserJet tough paper, a kind of polyester film available in consumer sizes.

The Latest Prototype

I was also able to get the ART system up and running for the AIDS clinics. Based on the observations we made earlier in the week, I was able to hack into the Ruby on Rails app and get it to work along with the bar-code scanner. Now MUAC data goes straight into the database--a full prototype system, working end to end! Sweet! And it works pretty much as expected (minus bar-code reader) on my touchscreen Nokia internet tablet.

ART application on the Nokia 800

So, next week is testing and observations. That should give me ample time to make adjustments before heading back to the states.

I'm back in the warm heart of Africa as of two days ago. After recovering from the trip yesterday (which was a national holiday, too) I'm in the Baobab offices fooling with some of the newer ScanBand prototypes.

Since I'll only have Wi-Fi part of the time, my main blogging channel will again be twitter, the feed for which will shown at the top of the homepage until I get back.

Pretty interesting stuff going down here right now. Just an hour or two before I landed, Malawi dropped ties with Taiwan in favor of China. In the long run, it looks like the best financial situation for Malawi, which could receive $6 billion in aid (as opposed to a relatively much smaller amount from Taiwan). In the near term, though, the Taiwanese are pulling out fast, and that could leave clinics run by them in serious disarray until everything stabilizes. This will be a very difficult situation in the next weeks and months for the health-care sector.

Anyway, I'm staying as a guest in an awesome house here. My roommate is William Kamkwamba, known widely for his homemade windmill. He just got back from the US, too, and started school this morning. Wish him good luck!

That's the scoop for now. It's going to be a very busy 10 days, but I'm very glad and very grateful to be back here.