WASHINGTON — Innovations in mobile devices are offering more than bigger touch screens and fancy colors: They’re connecting people from shore to shore on global health.
The mobile phone is a powerful tool that about 83 percent of American adults carry around in their pockets daily. But the thought of this device being used for more than just chatting is one some businesses have on their minds. They see it as a tool for worldwide entrepreneurship.
“Mobile technology offers extensive help on various forms of social and economic development,” said Darrell West, the author of a Brookings Institution Governance Studies report. “Wireless communications broaden access to information, improve capital access, overcome geographic limitations, and expand market access.”
This concept of implementing a society full of technology in hopes of success is a goal of digital citizenship, where each person utilizes technology to participate and engage.
The idea of an engaged citizenry is not new, but it is being expanded to a different sector of business: health.
In America, companies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focus on improving people’s health and giving people the chance to lift themselves out of poverty in developing countries.
In turn, the foundation offers grants to companies in the United States that want to harnesses advances in science and technology to save lives —the idea of global health.
One of these companies is the Grameen Foundation, which has received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the past few years. Grameen is in charge of researching, identifying, and piloting health applications for mobile phones.
In 2010, Grameen was given $100,000 in grants to develop a prototype of content authoring and management software for the delivery of health information and tools to low-end mobile phones.
Alex Counts, Grameen’s president and CEO, has been working with using mobile devices as a poverty alleviation accelerator for more than a decade and has learned the lesson of trial and error when developing new health technologies for other countries.
“One of our lessons is that the physical technology is the easy part of making technology work for the poor and one of the hard parts is how you have front line people who must help the poor and work with organizations,” Counts said. “It requires a lot of agility. You know what works in Uganda doesn’t necessarily work in Kenya.”
According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 56 percent of adults have cell phones in Kenya and 52 percent in Uganda. It is estimated there are 616 mobile users in Africa as a whole.
Brook Partridge, Vital Wave Consulting founder, uses technology solutions to see growth in emerging and foreign markets. She said she sees the mobile phone enabling a flow of information and interaction.
“From an information perspective, the amount of data that’s being collected through phones around the world has vast implications,” Partridge said. “It can be applied to the process of setting policy and really creating an environment that is more beneficial for citizens that allows for interaction.”
This connection developed between interaction of citizens and technology is a concept another software company took its lead from.
Ushahidi is a non-profit software company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. It allows people in the area to use mobile devices as an emergency response mechanism and keep them safe.
Users can access the Ushahidi platform by SMS, email, Twitter and the web to distribute information from a firsthand account of events to warn others. Their website gives a step-by-step guide in how to use the mobile application.
West still sees some barriers facing the growing usefulness of mobile technology in the business and health world, as he lays out in his report. But the solution may be as easy as building on the individual experience.
“There needs to be better training for entrepreneurship so people learn how to launch businesses and improve marketing, communications, and development,” West said. “Showing individuals how they can master the basics of business development and network with others would reduce barriers.”