App Developers Turn Their Eye to Global Sanitation

Call it the talking/pooping improvement gap: In many parts of the developing world, there are precious few places to relieve yourself safely and hygienically. In the same places, though, tons of people are using cellphones. “Over 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to proper sanitation, yet over 1 billion of these people have access to a mobile phone,” according Jae So, the World Bank's manager of water and sanitation.

So last December, the bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others staged an “International Sanitation Hackathon” that asked developers in different cities to invent technological solutions to bathroom-related death and disease. Out of the 1,000-plus techheads who participated in the event, 10 recently emerged as semifinalists, carrying armloads of apps that do everything from teach children stellar toilet hygiene to crowdsource the locations of troublesome “open defecation sites.”