Social services on wheels: A sustainable model to improve access in unreached communities

Abstract

Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).