9. PDA for providers. The idea is to get medical information in the hands of providers – anyone from a family care physician in the bush who needs to look at a pharmacopia, medical guidelines or academic literature on the PDA, to a Maternal Health specialist aiding in a birth.
8. Patient finanical account. With a specific account number, a text can be sent to someone’s account so that they can receive health care.
7. Cell psurvey tool in recent household survey identifying pregnant women
6. Birth registration. In Kenya, villiage chiefs were given either a cell phone or minutes on their existing phone to call with village births, including still births.
5 “Core patient record.” Many of you will be familiar with how medical records are kept on cards that patients take with them in the developing world. The idea here is to provide a patient record that is downloadable in the field, and where information can be added to and uploaded.
4. Up-to-date CD4 Counts. Similarly to the idea behind the core patient record, there is a significant need to have an accurate CD4 count when providing care for people living with HIV.
3. Data gathering tool for decision makers. An example was seen in earthquake in Haiti, where cell phones were used to send and receive information in order to allocate resources to the proper places.
2. Money transfer. While not specifically medical, the lives of many Kenyans are being transformed by an innovative mobile phone money transfer service. M-Pesa is offered by Safaricom Kenya, has a monoply on the money transfer market. Along these lines, tranfering money to community health workers for bus fairs for patients with fistulas and cleft lips. CHW gets incentive of $3.5 once the patient comes in with the specific bus ticket receipt and the CHWs name. A simple solution that was hugely popular, helping many women long past childbearing years
1 . Text4baby. This is Health and Human Services’ mhealth poster child. It is a free mobile information service designed to promote maternal and child health that boast 98,000 users to date.