Ebola and Big Data: Waiting on Hold

In the battle against Ebola, mobile phones could be invaluable—not just in themselves, as devices that can be used to send people public-health information or let them call helplines, but also because of the data they generate. Phone companies use call-data records, or CDRs, to manage their networks and bill their customers. These records include a caller’s identity, the time of the call, the phone tower that handled it and the number called. Other data which the firms collect can identify where a phone is even if it is not being used, because phones constantly send out signals so that their location is known, to enable them to receive calls.