You can’t say anymore that mobile devices are not going to change the world – m<whatever> is here, and it starts with health. The UN has released a report – mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World.
The NYT has a nice writeup, but the kicker is:
The Power of Mobile Technology
But beyond just the altruistic aspects of mobile healthcare, the UN report also demonstrated to mobile operators how programs such as these could provide value to the industry. That, said UN/Vodafone Foundation Partnership head Claire Thwaites (BBC article previously linked), was a crucial step since the industry, like many others today, stands at the edge of a downturn.
Because mobile technology is relatively cheap and easy to spread, it can connect the rural areas that desperately need healthcare with the large populations of doctors who live in the urban centers. For example, “in India,” said Dan Warren, director of technology for the GSM Association, the umbrella organization that hosts the MWC, “there are 1m people that die each year purely because they can’t get access to basic healthcare. The converse angle to that is that 80% of doctors live in cities, not serving the broader rural communities where 800 million people live.”
Some Drawbacks
Using mobile technology is not a panacea for the world’s health issues, though. Says Forrester analyst Elizabeth Boehm, one of the biggest issues with mobile healthcare is that “the people who are most in need of healthcare are usually more aged, so they don’t use the mobile or they’re not comfortable with it.” This limits the use of mobile phones in public health information campaigns.
However, as the technology continues to spread throughout the world, it’s easy to see how, over the course of time, phones could become a “doctor in your pocket” for the less fortunate citizens of our world.
The point I’d like to make on their drawbacks is that in the developing world, family structures are often quite different and younger family members and community members are likely going to be around to help out the elderly who might not be comfortable.
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