I was reading an article yesterday in the Mobile Word Focus Magazine, about the importance of mobile technology in the public health sector, especially so in developing countries. The article is written by Claire Thwaites, head of the United Nations Foundation - Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership. Here are the most interesting extracts:

Despite improvements in the quality and availability of treatment for common ailments, public health programs can often be hammpered by logistical difficulties in collecting and recording accurate data. Across the world vital and time-sensitive health data, if it is collected at all, is still collected on paper, usually by means of house-to-house surveys. The process of collecting and entering this information for analysis can take months or even years.
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Mobile technology represents a high research, cost efficient method for making health care more accessible, affordable, and effective. mHealth has the capacity to dramatically expand access to communications and to transmit voice and data at the precise time it is needed. This in turn, empowers health care workers to make improved diagnosis and provide citizens with access to health care where it is needed most.

With well over 3 billion mobile phones in use worldwide, mobile technology is becoming the most prevalent means of storing and transmitting data in order to improve the health of millions of people.

A full 64% of all mobile phone users are in the developing world, and it is estimated that by 2012, 50% of all individuals in remote areas of the world will have mobile phones. In addition, 80% of the world's population now live in an area with mobile phone coverage and the GSM Association expects this figure to rise to 85% by 2010.

mHealth applications can also be used to communicate directly with patients. For example, a simple application to send SMS message alerts to remind patients to take their medications. Health care providers have found that 40% of hospital readmissions for heart failure happen because patients fail to take their medication properly, suggesting that such a service could be life-saving for the patient and beneficial for hospitals wishing to avoid preventable admissions.
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The mobile technology-based Aftercare program supports the effective treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, and covers other aspects such as voluntary counselling. The information collected not only facilitates individual patient care, but is also used to build a database of information on the severity and prevalence of the South African AIDS epidemic in these regions. The goals of the program include reduction of treatment errors, increased volume of patient data, and increased confort for the patients as they receive HIV / AIDS care.
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During pilot testing of our mHealth program, real-time access to data has enabled officials to track medical supplies and vaccination rates, and inform rapid response to disease outbreaks. This was recently the case in Kenya, where refugees fleeing violence in neighbouring Somalia brought the polio virus into the country for the first time in more than 20 years. The Kenyan health ministry used its fledgling mobile health programme to evaluate the emergency polio vaccination campaign, generating real-time results that showed where follow-up efforts were still needed. In this case, fast access to health data ensured that a mass outbreak of the polio virus was prevented, as the officials were able to pinpoint the exact location where the virus was located and contain the outbreak before it spread to other towns and villages.

mHealth is certainly one of the most promising mobile services and indeed brings very hopeful messages to developing countries, such as Kenya. I expect more countries will adopt such services soon -- they can only benefit from their adoption.

If you are interested in reading more, there are a couple of previous related articles:

• Bluetooth Used By Hospitals: To Save Lives, Not For Marketing
• NHS Mobile Marketing Campaign
• NHS Mobile Marketing Continues..