In a world where there are a lot more mobile phones than healthcare centers, health practitioners are making the most of telecoms to bring essential care to all.

The mobile phone is revolutionizing people’s access to health. One example of this is in KwaZulu-Natal, a heavily populated province of South Africa with one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world.

Despite growing acceptance of the disease, with a public health system that provides affordable drugs and free testing and counseling, most people who get infected never get tested because of the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

To combat the problem, a mobile phone project, called Masiluleke, was started at one of the busiest hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal. In co-operation with MTN, one of South Africa’s biggest mobile operators, up to 1 million text messages are sent out daily with a reminder to call the national AIDS hotline. The project has been a huge success, especially among young men who have in increasing numbers called the hotline to get information about clinics outside their community where they can get tested.

Improved healthcare to more people
Transmitting important health information via the mobile phone is not the only method that is proving successful. Mobiles are also being used to collect health data and carry out remote monitoring to provide better care for people in remote rural areas.

In Rwanda, local officials use mobile phones to collect and transmit health data to detect possible outbreaks of disease and shortages of medicines. They also use the mobile phone to order medicines, send public health alerts and download medical guidelines. And in western Kenya, an HIV-testing project allows rural healthcare surveyors set up electronic health records (EHRs) from patients’ homes by putting their data into mobile phones. The aim is to establish EHRs for some 2 million people and public health officials think this will help them to identify and treat HIV patients and improve continuing patient care.

An area where mHealth applications can make a big difference is in supporting an already over-stretched health system, which is typically the case for most developing nations. Most people would like to see more doctors and nurses in place in remote, rural areas but because this is unlikely to happen in the near future, mHealth or telemedicine applications can be the answer.

One organization that supports this thinking is India’s Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation (ATNF), which is the oldest and largest multi-specialty telemedicine network in South Asia. ATNF has developed various models and solutions for telemedicine to be able to respond to different types of needs in India. It ranges from a simple conversation between two health professionals over the phone to real time video consultation where heart sounds and images are transmitted to medical professionals from remote areas using IP and ISDN lines.

In 2008, Ericsson and ATNF decided to work together to educate the public and to publizise, promote and implement telemedicine as an application over broadband-enabled mobile networks.

Ericsson and mhealth
K. Ganapathy, president of ATNF, believes telemedicine is the answer to the ever-growing health needs because of its effective delivery model. “We see in the future that telemedicine will be integrated into the normal health delivery care and that health-enabled mobile phones will become part of a doctor’s daily tools,” he says.

There is no doubt that there are endless possibilities when it comes to mHealth. Earlier this year, the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation published a report detailing more than 50 mHealth applications around the world, and the two charities encourage more innovative solutions to be created in the future.

mHealth or telemedicine represents a big opportunity for the telecom world because it encourages more people to get connected. In Africa alone, there were 80 million new subscribers in 2007 and by the first half of 2008 an additional 46 million were added.

Ericsson has entered into a number of public and private partnerships to explore how its core technology – mobile communication – can best be utilized to enhance access to and delivery of health services.

One such partnership is with the United Nations (UN) that founded the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in 2007. The MVP is an initiative that aims to help rural communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty and one of the first steps has been to put infrastructure in place in all of the 11 participating countries. A number of mHealth applications have also been introduced by Ericsson, and they range from emergency medical services to animal health tracking and early warning system (see box out).

Ericsson has also taken a global role in this area, being one of the founding members of the Digital Health Initiative. This initiative, which brings together both the public and the private sector, aims to look at how to best use modern technology to improve global health.

Amir Dossal, Executive Director, United Nations Office for Partnership, says the Digital Divide Initiative will help to form new partnerships across the health sector to help meet the health-related Millennium Development Goals set out by the UN. “In this regard, the UN sees Ericsson as a core strategic partner in the emerging field of digital health for development,” he says.

Ericsson is already showing that it is serious about its role by supporting a number of projects around the world. In Croatia, Ericsson Nikola Telsa has designed and delivered an e-health integrated information system that connects 2400 general practitioners and other health entities, such as pharmacies and dentists, with electronic exchange of patient data. And in Bangladesh, it is piloting high-speed internet access and a range of advanced services, such as mobile health and mobile learning, to support people living in the capital, Dhaka.

mHealth is here to stay. Not only because it is bringing much-needed healthcare to remote, rural areas but also, as put in the words of Ganapathy, is the next frontier for the telecom industry.

“The revenues will come by offering value-added services,” he says. “People will be willing to pay money if they can get healthcare through their mobile phone.”

This was originally published as a longer article in the Economist but has been edited by Torunn Hansen-Tangen