As part of its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a UN initiative to tackle extreme poverty by 2015 – Ericsson was one of the founding members in September 2008 of the UN Digital Health Initiative to bring health-care access to rural populations through mobile technology.

Digital Health

Led by the UN Office for Partnerships, the Digital Health Initiative (DHI) is a public/private partnership that works to create innovative models for the development and delivery of global health services to tackle diseases through information and communication technology.

While several African countries have made notable progress on some of the MDGs, no African country is likely to achieve all of the MDGs by 2015, on the basis of current trends highlighted in a report by the UN secretary general. Basic health infrastructure, human resources, equipment and supplies remain inadequate in providing essential maternal, child and reproductive health services, and in controlling and treating infectious diseases. Two-fifths of the African population live in extreme poverty and face other problems, such as the global food crisis, profound climate change and soaring energy prices. Due to these pressing needs, the DHI’s initial focus will be on Africa.

As a leader in telecommunications, Ericsson will use its expertise to lead the technology stream, focusing on mobile communications that enable delivery of and access to mobile health and telemedicine applications.

Initiatives to improve health services include telemedicine to improve health and education delivery to patients and health workers in remote rural areas. This helps health workers receive critical health information, save time and costs and reduce the need to travel. Other initiatives include the access to medical care during emergencies, tools to collect health- related data, such as patient records, birth and death registration, lab-test results, disease surveillance and control.

The Ericsson Innovation Center builds on the company's global experience of enabling access to healthcare, such as the Gramjyoti Project (2007), which brought a range of services including telemedicine, m-education and e-governance to rural communities in India. Since successfully completing this pilot project, Ericsson has expanded its partnership with Apollo Hospitals and is scaling up the initiative to cover 200,000 Indian villages. Another success story was the Alokito Bangladesh Project (2008), which brought high-speed, internet-enabled mobile learning and health care to poor rural areas around the country’s capital, Dhaka.

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