The massive diffusion of cell phones has placed a critical
healing tool in the hands of patients and health workers.
in Rural health Care
by Joel Selanikio
round the world, mobile
phone use is skyrocketing.
In Colombia, there are more
mobile subscribers per 100 inhabitants than in the United States. In
Kenya, more than four out of every
ten people are mobile subscribers—
up from essentially zero just 10 years
ago. And because phones are often
shared within families, mobile access is even greater. Connected to the
network and inexpensive enough to
be purchased by many more people
than can afford a desktop or a laptop, the mobile phone is becoming
a “computer for the people.”
Nowhere is the revolutionary potential of this rapid spread of mobile
technology as great as in the field of
health care for underserved communities. In this connected new world,
nearly any health worker has the
ability to consult with colleagues
using something as simple and as
affordable as a $20 mobile phone.
Without a doubt, this simple technology, unimaginable 20 years ago
but today taken for granted, has gone
a long way toward ending the physical and intellectual isolation of rural health care providers.
Efforts to improve health care
with mobile phones—a strategy re-
ferred to as mHealth—focus on ru-
ral health workers because, while
most such workers around the world
receive some initial training, they
do not have access to ongoing in-
struction or continuing education:
no workshops, no journal subscrip-
tions, no video training, and no con-
ferences. Yet because many or most
of those health workers now have
mobile phones, there is, for the first
time, the possibility of communi-
cating regularly with health care
specialists, experts, researchers, and
each other in far flung places. This
opens the possibility of sending rel-
evant educational information by
methods as basic as the text message.
