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Cell Phones Come to Rescue of Africa's Health Sector

   Nico Colombant  April 28, 2011
   Patients in Liberia can now benefit from better connected doctors.

Photo: N. Colombant, VOA

   Patients in Liberia can now benefit from better connected doctors.

   Several U.S. non profit organizations are releasing new products to use
   in Africa to help governments and health practitioners improve their
   health systems with mobile phone technology.
   The Washington-based Medic Mobile non profit recently released a video
   promoting a test version of one of its new products called PatientView.
   Its aim is to give hospitals in rural African areas the ability to
   manage patient information through cell phones.
   At a recent conference in Washington, an executive with Medic Mobile's
   sister organization Frontline SMS, Sean McDonald, talked about another
   project in the testing stage, which would turn camera enabled cell
   phones into diagnostic tools.
   "What they are doing with these phones is they are taking pictures of
   people and then running them through databases to give completely
   automated diagnostics so there is hospital quality care in places where
   all you need is a camera with a phone and a signal," he said.
   Some of the cell phone applications being worked on would allow for
   malaria testing of photographed blood samples within 10 seconds.
   Eric Woods, the founder of a non profit organization called
   Switchboard, is partnering with cell phone communication providers in
   Ghana and Liberia to let doctors use the phones they already have for
   free doctor to doctor calls and text messaging.
   "We are piggybacking on what doctors are already using. But we are just
   giving them new ways to collaborate with one another," Woods said.
   Woods explains doctors can also access a free doctor directory as part
   of a service called MDNet.
   In turn, the communication companies are getting new clients, and now
   want to expand the service to nurses as well. Woods says a new product
   in Ghana called Ensembl, expected later this year, will create a web
   platform where every doctor can instantly receive and send messages.
   "So essentially, someone at the Ministry of Health or the Ghana Health
   Services could log onto a web interface if there is a disease outbreak
   across the country, in a specific region or district, they can target
   those particular physicians and send out an SMS message that says there
   is a measles outbreak in your area please make sure you have the
   Vitamin A, the antibiotics on hand to be able to handle this outbreak,"
   he said.
   A former regional director for the International Development Research
   Center in east and southern Africa, Connie Freeman, says such
   innovations seem to be following the right path.
   "I am delighted that these organizations are out and essentially trying
   to adapt the technologies to the local situation rather than the
   reverse. My experience in the field is that everybody always wanted us
   to take on the latest technology, including in my office and included
   for me, and it did not work. It did not work because of bandwidth,
   because of electricity outages. But Africans are very creative in the
   use of technology. They are very creative in finding solutions because
   they have had to find solutions over time. They do not have as many
   tools," Freeman said.
   Woods from the San Francisco-based non-profit Switchboard says he
   noticed relationships are key to get a program going.
   "Government, the health care workers, I think that is the real critical
   piece, so just make sure you understand what are the country's
   priorities. I think we want to make sure we are supporting the work
   that the Ministry of Health has slated as its top priorities, make sure
   you are supporting the work that needs to get done and then just really
   involving them with the whole process," Woods said.
   Woods says he hopes to expand his programs to other African countries
   as well. Other cell phone uses in the health field developed by non
   profits which have become more commonplace in Africa include receiving
   a text message for a doctor's appointment, text messages for blood
   results, and messages to remind patients to take their medication.