IST Research poised to bring technical innovations to the challenges posed by violent militant groups and human traffickers, as well as the immediate dangers posed by Ebola in African nations.

Fredericksburg, Virginia – 2 October 2014 – IST Research has been selected to build a reliable, highly deployable telecommunications and information gathering solution based on its Pulse platform technology in response ongoing military strife throughout Central Africa.  In conjunction with this work, IST plans to explore the potential for innovation that Pulse can offer in the ongoing fight against Ebola and human trafficking within the region. 

Issues of public safety are at the heart of the work IST will be performing in Central Africa as they build human and technical networks to track the movement of militant soldiers and work to encourage their defection.

In Central Africa, Pulse technology will capitalize on the growing use of Short Message System (SMS) services and simple, non-smart mobile phone availability to provide robust data collection capabilities, deployable in days. Pulse will provide a high degree of adaptability and scalability due to its lightweight, stand-alone design.The unique strengths of Pulse technology are perfectly suited to overcome the geographic, social, economic and technological limitations encountered across much of the African continent.

“With Pulse and an incredible team of passionate innovators, we continue to address humanitarian challenges such as human trafficking across the globe.  Yet, for all that we have accomplished, we believe that we have only scratched the surface of what Pulse can do.  We are eager to explore this new opportunity and see just how much of a difference we can make,” said IST Research founder and CEO, Ryan Paterson.

IST has already made great advances  in the ongoing, coordinated effort against human trafficking, and the capabilities of Pulse have enabled unprecedented coordination of big data analytics, passive monitoring of open internet data, and active engagement with law enforcement and volunteers.  They are now eager to explore the application of similar methodologies to the problems associated with the Ebola outbreak. 

Work on the Pulse project in Central Africa is set to begin in early October and will continue over the next 12 months.

About Pulse Technology

Pulse is designed to enable the user from campaign design through analysis, featuring simultaneous campaign launches and collections across six integrated communications modalities: Interactive Voice Response (IVR), SMS, Smart Phone Apps, Web Forms, Social Media, and “Paper-to-Digital” Technology.  The Pulse User Interface (PUI) is the user’s web-based portal into Pulse, with the ultimate goal to be available through other modalities and used to launch integrated collection across multiple modalities and track the results in a single consistent data structure on the back end to receive, normalize and visualize collected information.   

More information about the capabilities of Pulse is available on the IST Research website.

About IST Research

IST Research is a small business that innovates technologies and processes to meet challenges around the world. Our work ranges from conversing with locals in Afghanistan to digitizing healthcare in Zambia to countering human trafï¬Âcking through open data. Help us reinvent the way to communicate the edge, maximizing impact, minimizing conflict, mitigating risks, and engineering win-win solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges