The Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards is a contest to promote the development of IT applications designed to improve the lives of those with disabilities and people that are older, to help them get more actively involved in society. 

In 2012 we celebrate the II Edition after the great results of last year competition. In 2011 over 60 apps were received and more than 100 people participated in the awards. Find more information about 2011 finalists and winners.

The programme is supported and co-organized by AGE Platform Europe, the European network of around 160 organizations of and for people aged 50+, and the European Disability Forum (EDF), the NGO that represents the interests of 80 million Europeans with disabilities.

Launched in Brussels, the competition will award the best smartphone application in four areas:

•  Social participation: refers to applications which help users to become more involved in today's society and help them benefit from using new technologies, whatever their age and/or capacity.   The aim is to help everyone to access the web and social media through smartphones.

•  Independent living: refers to applications which help users with everyday tasks such as washing or opening a door easily and safely so that they can live more independently

•   Mobility: refers to applications which enable users to travel freely and safely whatever kind of transport system they would like to use. It also refers to the use of GPS and locations apps which can help guide people in unfamiliar places.

•   Wellbeing: refers to applications which improve the users' health and overall feeling of wellbeing.

Entrants can compete for a share of the €200k prize fund from 30 May 2012 to 15 October 2012. Finalist will present their application to the jury in a final event that will take place in December in Brussels.

Here are six testimonials which can help to inspire you to create new ways of making technology accessible for all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt4crzvwaYA&feature=player_embedded

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One of the most prominent themes of this week’s General Assembly has been using low-cost mobile technology to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5: drastically lowering child mortality while boosting maternal and reproductive health in developing nations.

Since there could be 50 billion mobile devices with broadband access by 2017, as Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg predicted at the recent Social Good Summit, it’s no wonder that mobile phones are being harnessed in areas that may be remote and resource-limited, but are no longer disconnected from global health solutions. Here’s a look of three nascent initiatives using mobile technology to create a global health impact:

1. Perhaps the most effective means of empowering women in developing nations to make informed health-care decisions is through basic, adaptable messaging. For the past year, USAID, Johnson & Johnson, and the mHealth alliance have developed the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) to connect with over 20 million expectant and new mothers in 35 countries. Using simple mobile technology, MAMA offers vital health information on everything from swaddling to breast-feeding to immunizations.

MAMA has already been effective in South Africa, Indonesia and Bangladesh, where expectant and new mothers now have access (often for the first time) to a global sharing of timely, topical, culturally relevant health information.

2. Medic Mobile transcends the communication and geographic obstacles that all too often limit the efforts of health-care workers in developing nations. As CEO Josh Nesbit told the Social Good Summit audience, Medic Mobile started out by equipping 100 frontline community health workers in Malawi with mobile phones to facilitate essential services for pregnant women and newborn babies.

Nesbit saw the opportunity to offer critical care services in remote areas by harnessing a mobile phone infrastructure that already existed. Considering WHO’s assessment that half of all maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and that there are more cell phones on the African continent than in the United States, Nesbit’s plan made perfect sense.

3. The next frontier in improving the health of mothers and children is digitizing food assistance. Enter the Better than Cash Alliance, which is helping some of the world’s most indigent populations by transitioning from cash payments to electronic aid, creating a “cash-lite” world.

Through mobile phones and text messages, the Better than Cash Alliance can deliver digital food vouchers, or “e-vouchers”, that enable people to buy food from local markets. According to WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, “By 2015, WFP expects 30 percent of its assistance programs to be delivered in the form of cash and digital food”.

(Source: The Interdependent)

The mHealh Alliance and the Innovation Working Group (IWG) awarded IICD a grant for its mobile community health programme in Mali. In this programme, mothers who act as Community Workers use mobile phones to strengthen their malaria prevention work. For the programme, IICD partners with mobile provider Orange Mali and French NGO RAES.

The awarded programme trains 45 mothers in the use of mobile phones and the use of a special mobile application to collect data during visits to the communities around Bamako. The data that the mothers collect, help health specialists from nearby health centres to improve patient case management by conducting prevention, diagnosis and treatment in a more efficient and cost effective way. The grant enables IICD to further improve child and maternal health monitoring in Yirimadjo, a poor outskirt community of Bamako. The mothers who are health workers also come from this area, where malaria is the most urgent problem. Because of malaria, maternal and child mortality in the area is high.

IICD and its partners will expand the programme to 150 more Community Health Workers in Mali and 100 Community Health Workers in Senegal within two years time. This will be done in close collaboration with French NGO RAES. Telecom provider Orange offers technical support.

The grant that IICD's community health programme in Mali received was selected out of many applications, together with seven others. The grant is an initiative of the mHealth Alliance, a global project founded by the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation, and the UN’s Innovation Working Group.

(Source: IICD)

Moving to digital hospital management took some time. In the first phase, with the support of IICD, some key staff was trained and computers were already partially used in the administration office to for instance create schedules for nurses and computers were placed in an Internet café in the hospital. This allowed staff to already get familiar with computers. Then about 2 months before introducing the Hospital Management Information System (HMIS), 40 staff members were trained for 2 weeks in a basic ICT training that was focused on getting to know the system in simple way.

In addition to the reduced waiting time, another benefit for patients is that they now know better what they pay for. As there was not a general price list, pharmacists often worked with estimated prices. This meant that it differed what you had to pay depending on which pharmacist you would get. With the digital system, errors are virtually impossible. All products are priced in the system and patients now get digital receipts with the exact amounts.

For the hospital, the digital system also has financial benefits. Of course it costs money to implement, but it also raises money. The hospitals had to deal with patients not paying for their treatment and medicine, because of poor communication between the registering office, the lab, the pharmacy and the billing department or simply because of a hurry.  This lost the hospital a significant amount of money every day that could have been used for new hospital equipment or hiring specialists.

Now, it’s not possible for a patient to walk out without paying anymore. The doctor orders a certain medicine from the pharmacy for a patient digitally and then the billing department gets the information about how much this medication costs. Only after the patient paid the amount for medication and doctor treatment, will the computer system allow patients to pick up their medicines.

The system is cost- and energy efficient by using Ncomputing hardware. The big advantage of this virtual desktop solution is that multiple computer screens and keyboards are able to run on one computer. This makes the system very energy efficient and does not require a lot of maintenance.

(Source: IICD)
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With the socialization of public policies and experiences in telehealth and medicine in the ICT sector, the ICT Ministry participated in the Third International Telemedicine Conference where over 150 representatives of the health sector met to discuss technology and health.

The event, organized by the Center for Telemedicine in Colombia, with the participation of national and international experts in the field of telemedicine, telehealth and e-health held various  academic sessions such as workshops, lectures, courses and specialized tradeshow to showcase advances in telemedicine industry.

"With the development of telemedicine in Colombia we are saving lives, professionals in Health have increasingly tools to practice, making that all people receive timely medical care and quality, regardless of where they are, all this thanks to the opportunities offered by today's technology "said Johanna Pimiento, Manager of the Program e-Government, who participated in the first day of the Conference.
ICT Ministry and telehealth.

Since Act 1419 of 2010, which establishes guidelines for the development of telehealth in Colombia and its development; which aims to support the Social Security System in Health on principles of efficiency, universality, solidarity, integrity , unity and quality telehealth as public policy seeks to improve through technology, health conditions of the Colombian population, particularly the ones who are socially and economically vulnerable, finding themselves in places difficult to access and out of reach from the health institutions of medium and high complexity.

The key to a successful use of eHealth is that it should lead to a lasting and substantial improvement of performance. Experience teaches that a participatory design approach is required when using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and when designing health solutions. This creates a momentum for change. However, health facilities are often complex organizations and we learned that to create continuous and lasting change, explicit attention is required to the on-going process of organizational change. The momentum for change should be transformed in a pathway. IICD and its partners in Tanzania developed a practical and integrated approach that scaffolds health management information systems, telemedicine and e-learning in one integrated approach called the eHealth package, which has relevance worldwide.

The eHealth package is applied in the Lake Zone in Tanzania. It is embedded in a district approach to ensure a more conducive institutional and financial setting. Organizational and institutional issues proved to be key obstacles in applying ICT in health. Therefore the district approach is closely related to the national eHealth strategy. The strength of the eHealth package compared to other eHealth solutions is the integration of all aspects; technical, medical, financial, learning, behavioural change etc. in a flexible road map of best practices for eHealth implementation at a health facility.

(Source: IICD)
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Experts at eLearning Africa 2011 suggested that eLearning could bridge the alarming skills gap that exists between nurses trained in different disciplines. Some pointed to successful partnerships with NGOs in East Africa. Others discussed scale and replicability in African medical training.

The question of content and related issues including information access and development was a key theme of the session ‘What contribution can eLearning make towards confronting the skills challe nge of Africa’s health sector?’

Mohamed Labib discussed HSO.info, a well-resourced website with expert free health sciences information. The vision is to make this relevant and available to all health workers. The importance of partnerships was noted here, both south-south and north-south. The example provided was the University Teaching Hospital in Zambia, partnering with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

The session included two presentations from the Tanzanian Training Centre for International Health (TTCIH). Angelo Nyamtema pointed out the severe shortage of healthcare workers in Tanzania and discussed the progress being made in developing an eLearning training programme, including their approach to pedagogical design and course structuring.

Diana Mukami discussed the African Medical and Research Foundation’s successful nurse upgrading programme via eLearning. Since its inception nearly six years ago, the programme – a classic public-private partnership – has enrolled 7000 nurses across 108 eCentres in Kenya and graduated over 2000 nurses. It comprises General Nursing, Reproductive Health, Community Health and Specialised Areas.

(Source: eLearning Africa)
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(Source: IICD)

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Three hospitals in the towns of Saboba, Wiaga and Bawku in Northern Ghana, are setting up an upgraded health information system, customised to fit their specific needs. The system can help to increase the hospitals efficiency giving more insight into patients registrations, help to more easily keep track of pharmacy stock and more.

The system contains several components that will each help different areas of the hospital.

• Clinical: Patients records and registrations, prescriptions, admissions and discharges, investigations (x-rays, laboratory, ultrasound scans etc.) and daily measurements.

• Stock and Inventory Management: Pharmacies, stocks and dispensaries, procurements, external orders and receivables.

• Human Resource: Managing staff, payroll, promotions and appraisals, recruitment and leave of absence.

• Income and Expenditure: Invoicing and billing, sponsors and patients invoicing, refunds and deposit payments.

• General Reports: Daily attendance, patient registrations, services and their fees, drugs bulletin, clinics, inpatient and outpatient listing as well as medical sponsors.

The system will also provide the Ghanaian Ministry of Health with data concerning mortality, morbidity, outpatients and inpatients, midwife returns, surgical returns and bed state statistics. Local partner CHAG will also have the opportunity to monitor and compare the data from these hospitals in real time.

This health information system will be up-scaled with the financial, technical and training support of IICD and Cordaid, working as members of the Connect4Change Consortium.
It will be customised based on an already available system, HAMS, created by Ghanaian organization Infotech.

HAMS is already being applied in more than 100 hospitals all over the country. The system provides a valuable source of medical, financial,administrative, human resources and insurance data. In addition, it is linked to DHIS2, the central public health monitoring system where information on all the hospitals in Ghana is accessible at all times.

(Source: IICD)
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Inspired by the Haiti earthquake disaster in 2010, the idea of Health eVillages came about when Donato Tramuto, Health eVillages’ co-founder and CEO of Physicians Interactive, and Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Washington D.C. based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, were discussing ideas about what they could do to help the victims.

Launched in Sep 26, 2011 as a partnership between Physician’s Interactive Holdings, its subsidiary Skyscape.com, Inc. and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Health eVillages seeks to provide healthcare professionals working in challenging clinical environments with medical decision making, clinical diagnosis and training tools in easy-to-use mobile devices.

New and refurbished mobile phones and handheld devices (like iPads) are preloaded with clinical decision support reference tools like patient records, drug guides, textbooks and related medical data. These devices, which do not require web access, are given to clinical and healthcare workers to ensure that they always have medical information available. Besides medical alerts, the devices support access to references from over 50 medical publisher resources powered by Skyscape.com, Inc.

Nurses and clinicians in Haiti, Kenya, Uganda and the Greater Gulf Coast area of the Southern United States have received these devices. “Health eVillages arm clinicians with a ‘gold standard’ medical reference tool-kit, so they are prepared for any situation and are able to properly treat even the most unique medical conditions. [In] most of the areas where these mobile devices have been given, people don’t have access to basic electricity let alone the most advanced medical treatment,” said Tramuto.

He added: “These devices enable them to identify the right dose, identify a condition or seek the latest research in a particular area. For each country we customize the software. In Haiti we have programs specific to nurses diagnosing a disease or condition particular to Haiti. The drug and dosage information is monitored accordingly.  Patient details can be entered in as well. Now there is no need to run around looking for information either about a patient or a condition”.

Using donated and refurbished phones, the project works very closely with medical officers and leaders of target communities to ensure that information is completely customized and specific to their area.

Health eVillages identifies clinics through partners and associates of the Robert F. Kennedy Center and Physician’s Interactive Holdings. Staff members from the project are sent to locations with specific programs most often requested by the medical personnel in the area.

They have seven pilot projects running and early data points shows that medical personnel rate their data finding methods very helpful. “We hope to raise more funds after the competition of our pilot projects”, said Tramuto. Health eVillages clearly has big plans for the future of mobile health technology.

(Source: AudienceScapes)
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Patients of Singapore’s National Skin Centre (NSC) can now have an access to their treatment records and communicate with their healthcare team from homes.

The NSC today launched its online Patient Health Portal, the first for a health institution in Singapore, and possibly in Asia that will enable patients to conduct a variety of tasks related to their treatments, said Dr Steven Thng, consultant at the National Skin Centre.

“The benefit includes corresponding with the healthcare team via email about medication, treatment and procedure queries”, he said.

Patients will also be connected to more information concerning their medical condition.

According to him, the NSC has more than one hundred people signing on this free service since it was piloted late last year.

In term of confidentiality, Dr Thng said that patients do not need to worry as they are required to use a secured password to log onto the website.

The NSC is a public tertiary-care institute that provides specialized dermatological services, trains and educates both medical students and post-graduate trainees.

(Source: FutureGov)
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With a staff of approximately 6000, Barwon Health is one of the largest and most comprehensive regional health services in the Australian State of Victoria. Having successfully reduced the elective surgery waiting list, improved Emergency Department wait times and finished last year with a budget surplus, last November Barwon Health was named “regional health service of the year”.

According to CIO Ann Larkins, Barwon Health’s ehealth journey began around 2005, the success of which she ascribes to their strategy of agile development, “our approach has been about incremental developments rather than a big bang”.

Having started with a basic system that provided pathology results online, this has been gradually developed in stages to now provide everything offered by the larger ehealth software providers including digital medical records, medications management, electronic messaging to GPs via Health Level Seven. “It has become a complete one stop shop clinical system” says Larkins, “not too dissimilar to some of your bigger companies the product that we are using has evolved from a much smaller base but with much more of our input into it along the way”.

The benefit of this development methodology is that, “it is a much more agile way to respond to the requests of clinicians whereas some of the less responsive big companies find that difficult and challenging. We’ve achieved a lot in a small time with small agile developments”.

This has allowed for department specific systems be either integrated with or developed within the main clinical system. “We respect the needs of different departments to have their own system where there is need for them, but where there’s functionality already existing we pull them into the core”.

(Source: FutureGov)
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South Africa is leading the way in launching mobile health (mHealth) services with some of the most successful and best known mHealth initiatives having been developed in this country. This is according to Andrea Monteiro, director of Mobile Health Africa, which will gather the leading minds in the industry in Johannesburg in May.

“Africa suffers more than 24% of the global burden of disease”, says Andrea, “but has an average of only two doctors per 10,000 people – a shocking statistic. It means that providing the majority of people in Africa with healthcare is a major challenge”. She says the evolution of mHealth services in Africa is enabling the drastic improvement of the healthcare infrastructure: “In its most basic form it will provide access to healthcare advice and information even in the most remote parts Africa”.

According to the Mobile Health Africa director, South Africa represents the ideal platform for the deployment and evolution of mHealth services. She explains: “The country has a brilliant telecoms infrastructure, both in terms of service provisioning and technology and is home to several entrepreneurial NGOs currently investing in mobile technologies. On a social level, mobile penetration rates are very high, and other mobile services such as mobile money/mobile banking are already well established and used successfully on a day-to-day basis”.

The objective is to evolve pilots to successful live mHealth deployments. Mobile Health Africa 2012 will provide the perfect platform for the establishment of the business models and partnerships needed to build sustainable and scalable mHealth services throughout Africa. The event will feature presentations from organizations and companies that are leading the development of mHealth initiatives on the continent.

Mobile Health Africa 2012 is part of the Connected Africa Forum, which will showcase the evolution of mobile lifeline services and applications in Africa, and highlight the evolving intersection between mobile money, mobile health and mobile agriculture.

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(Source: PR. Com)

Based on the explosive growth in global mobile phone penetration, a technology revolution is quickly gaining pace in healthcare. Around the world, healthcare systems are overburdened, costly and incapable of meeting the needs of a growing population. According to a new study from The Boston Consulting Group and Telenor Group, mobile health technology can offer sizeable benefits to all countries, lead to economic growth and promise a better life for individuals.

The study "Socio-Economic Impact of mHealth " - commissioned by Telenor Group and carried out by The Boston Consulting Group - is a comprehensive survey of the impact that mHealth initiatives can have in 12 countries. What unites them all is that mobile health technology can improve the quality, reach and effectiveness of services while reducing costs and the overall system burden.

Telenor Group has launched a number of mobile health initiatives across its markets. In Norway, an assisted living project helps the elderly stay longer at home through mobile alarm systems. In Thailand, a mobile text messaging service provides epidemic surveillance. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, a service called Healthline provides patients with a simple number to dial for both serious and non-serious medical needs. In India, mothers can obtain critical information about prenatal health via their phones. In Montenegro, a joint project with the EU provides a service for remotely located elderly people, enabled by one touch on a button on their mobile handset. In Serbia, mobile health technology is used to increase the quality of medical registration and reporting for the Roma community.

Among the key findings:

• The necessary infrastructure is already in everyone's hands: 7.4 billion mobile subscriptions projected by 2015

• The technology richness and network capacity is sufficient, both on simple feature phones and on smart devices

• Currently, more than 500 mobile health projects are taking place around the world

• Costs in elderly care can be reduced by 25% with mobile healthcare

• Maternal and perinatal mortality can be reduced by 30%

• Twice as many rural patients can be reached per doctor

• Tuberculosis treatment compliance can be improved by 30-70%

• 30% of smartphone users are likely to use "wellness apps" by 2015

• Costs related to data collection can be reduced by 24%

• Smartphone is the most popular technology among doctors since the stethoscope

(Source: Reuters News)
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Recent mobile phone initiatives in Bangladesh are allowing patients to reach a health worker for advice at no cost 24 hours a day, receive prenatal care reminders and even send complaints about patient care.

“It is difficult to manage doctors for [a national population of] 140 million people. We are using mobile phone service to bridge this treatment gap“, Abul Kalam Azad, a senior official at the Directorate General of Health Services, told IRIN.

Close to 60 percent of the population - some 85 million people - use mobile phones in Bangladesh, according to a December 2011 report from the country’s telecommunications regulatory commission.

Cut off from formal medical care, some patients turn to untrained or “fake” doctors, leading to fatal remedies, said Azad, who wants to counter this trend with sound health advice.

Since 2009, the government has provided cell phones to 482 sub-district and district government hospitals, which are used as round-the-clock hotlines staffed by health workers.

Nationwide there is one doctor for every 3,200 residents and one hospital bed for every 1,738 people, according to government data published in 2011.

While this proportion of doctors to residents exceeds the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended minimum of one doctor per 10,000 residents to ensure basic health services, the picture in rural areas is markedly different.

“There are many hard-to-reach areas where it is difficult for the people to quickly rush to the hospitals. These people are getting health advice by the mobile phone health service”, said Azad. The country is in the bottom 20 countries ranked by NGO Save the Children for health workers’ ability to reach patients in need.

(Source: IRIN News)
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WARID and Orange Uganda have joined the Mobile Money network to offer money transfer services to their clients. MTN's Mobile money and UTL's M-Sente are already in operation with DSTV, Umeme, NWSC among others using this service for customers to settle their bills.

At Case Clinic for example, you clearly see a notice displayed at the payment point that they accept mobile money payments. This can be helpful in a number of ways, assuming you are short on cash of course as you did not know the cost of the drugs coupled with the consultation fee, you could go ahead and call up a friend to bail you out by sending the money to your phone so that the medical bills can be settled.

Not so many people might be embracing it now but it will be a matter of time before this becomes a way of life though problems like load shedding can easily affect you if you do not charge your mobile phone.

To access your account which in this case is your mobile phone, it must be on. To receive money as well, the phone must be on because unlike SMS that can be delivered when the phone is switched on, you must use a service centre to retrieve mobile money messages.

(Source: Uganda Online)
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The program “Padrino Tecnológico” has been introduced in the University of Alcala de Henares as part of the activities of CAPTA II , organized by the Chair for the Improvement of Personal Autonomy of Telefonica, which objective is the research, development, education and outreach to strengthen technologies such as "Internet of Things" and increase personal autonomy of certain groups (Disabled people, elderly, sick people ...).

The initiative has as protagonists to the "sponsors", volunteers who spend time for designing and developing ICT solutions for children with motor and / or cognitive high impairment. It also has the involvement of the University students as potential entrepreneurs, who could use the existing market niche around disability, who are nearly 1,000 million people worldwide.

Also concerning to the accessibility, experts from the National Center of Techniques Accessibility (CENTAC), the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Telefónica, which participated in the conference, wanted to highlight the key issue that services based on “Internet of Things” will be viable and accessible for all society: design but taking into account all people, whatever their capabilities, making them affordable; paying attention in the security and privacy of data, taking advantage of them, and promoting digital literacy for easy using.

But “Internet of Things” is not only key for the inclusion in the society of people with disabilities, but also constitutes an industrial sector to develop, which may contribute to the sustainability of Health, for example, by telecare solutions for the chronically ill and to seek a healthy aging (keep in mind that at 2050, 30% of the Spanish population will be more than 80 years old).

At the meeting, attended by over 100 people, also they stressed the benefits of smart cities or smartcities. So, Javier Vizcaino, manager of Public Administrations of Telefónica for the Centre Territory, explained that these smart cities provide suitable information to public managers, so they can take better decisions, make easy the participation of citizens, promote efficiency in the use of energy resources, and improve accessibility.

(Source: Telefonica –España)
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Recently, Merck Sharp & Dohme ( MSD) Peru launchedvia Facebook,a useful source ofinformation for women:"Being a Woman", which has the objective to inform women onwhatit means to befemale.There is possible to findthe answers tofrequently asked questions thatare commonlyperformed by women, thinking of their benefits, health andbeauty, amongother interestingtopics.

To answer all kinds of inquiries with regard to women, it will be available a health specialist about sexuality. The expert also will absolveconsultationson contraception, menopause, fertility, among other subjects that the visitors of the page are interested on.In additionitwill providetipsand contestsvia thispopularsocial network.In this regardDr. MonicaNaranjoCáceres,gynecologyspecialist,said that this is important means ofinformingourfemale population, starting obviously with theteenagersand coversall womenof childbearing age,to enjoya full sex lifeand apersonal.The link iswww.facebook.com/sermujer.pe

"Women today should be better informed and know more about what it means to be a woman", noted the specialist.

(Source: Perumagazin)

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The award " Connected to Grow," seeks to identify and recognize best efforts developed in rural areas of the country, which have had social and economic impact in their residents and / or communities using telecommunications as a base, said Alvaro Valdez Fernandez Baca, Director of Communications, Image and Corporate Responsibility of Telefónica.

"We are very pleased with the results of this contest which confirm that ICT is an important tool to accelerate the development of peoples and enhance the skills and talent of rural entrepreneurs, enabling them to improve the quality of their crops, implementing new business and make more informed people, to improve their life standard and its environment", said Valdez Fernandez Baca.

The winners, chosen from 23 finalists, received stimuli for a total of S /. 60,000 (US$ aprox. 20,000), as well as the latest laptops generation.

First place prize went to the Rural Tourism Association Solidario (ASTURS) from Capachica (Puno), represented by Walter Pancca Paucar. This is about an experiential tourism project, which has improved the lives of 75 families of 9 communities with microcredit and straightening abilities, from ICT and development of solidarity with tourist travel. This initiative has the support of the Departs associations and Culture Contact in France.

The second place went to the project "Telemedicine in health" which was presented by Dr. Georgina Valentin Rojas. This initiative developed in the community of Balsapuerto (Loreto) is important because have successfully implemented telemedicine from a wireless network for voice and data interfaces to 11 health facilities, decreasing mortality and disease epidemiology.

Finally, Commander Trinidad Wilbert Callapiña Durand, was awarded third place on behalf of the Police Division Acomayo (Cusco), the project has allowed this division to be trained in the use of ICT and improve their operation in the program "Willay" from a telecommunications network that provides a dial-up Internet access point that comes through repeater stations installed in strategic areas.

It was also awarded the "Special Award Living Testimony" to the five best stories of life of people who stood out among 37 witnesses, who have benefited with the use of ICT in their communities.

(Source: Telefonica del Peru)
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The United Nations’ technology body, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is calling for a wider use of technology projects in helping countries adapt to climate change.

At the Durban Summit last week, the ITU released a study focusing on how an ICT project allowed Ghana’s cocoa industry to become more resilient to the effects of climate change. The ITU said Ghana’s case should set an example for other developing countries.

The study focuses on how ICT can be used in optimising production by, for example, sharing information in real time between producers and end users, said Dr Bilel Jamoussi, chief of the ITU’s Study Groups department, in an interview with Business Green.

He said ICT has, in general, been overlooked as a tool for helping developing countries adapt, and that Ghana’s case demonstrates the value that these countries can find in technology projects.

“It’s a really good sign that these countries are seeing how they can adapt”, he said. “These countries are not always big producers of greenhouse gases, but they are the most affected [by climate change]”.

The ITU believes that ICT has in general been overlooked as a way of helping stem climate change and to adapt to its effects, Jamoussi said.

“Our key goal is that ICT is viewed as an enabler and plays a central role in adaptation and mitigation”, Jamoussi told Business Green. “Our report and recommendations are a concrete example of that”.

As part of its wider support of ICT’s role in mitigating climate change, the ITU has created a set of standardized methodologies for assessing the impact of ICT on the environment, and has participated in other initiatives such as the development of a standardized, energy-efficient mobile phone charger.

The ITU gave its approval for the concept for a universal phone charger in 2009, with the aim of drastically reducing the number of chargers produced, shipped and subsequently discarded as new models become available.

(Source: eweekerope)
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Health minister Onybeuchi Chukwu says Nigeria must begin deploying information and communication technology (ICT) in health delivery but insists it must be driven by "a policy that's coherent, but more importantly implementable" .

A national conference looking at deploying information and communication technology has opened in Abuja.

Declaring it open, the minister said stakeholders must galvanise "action toward ensuring ICT is employed in the best manner that will help to drive the health sector toward" targets set in the National Health Development Plan.

"Our traditional ways of doing things can no longer be considered sufficient", he said.

Among new technologies in medicine is mobile health, which allows the public get health information on their mobile phones.

But the minister noted there were plans to replace old plastic syringes with automatic ones next year.

He stressed that deploying ICT in health could open up innovative ways to drive down the cost of healthcare, improve education and training programmes, accessibility and reliability of medical records. It could also make disease control more efficient, Chukwu noted.

The health ministry is coordinating with both the ministries of communications technology as well as science and technology.

Science and technology ministry has already launched a telemedicine project in Lagos, according to the minister, Prof Ita Okon Bassey Ewa, noting that a vibrant IT system could give a health sector "that responds to needs".

Dr Andrew Mbewe of the World Health Organisation said Nigeria needed to institute a national coordinating mechanism for various e-health systems, coordinate investments in e-health and health information systems from donors and partners as well as assess appropriate policies at all levels.

(Source: AllAfrica News)
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A Kenyan is among two innovators awarded $250,000 (approximately Sh25,000,000) to develop pre-natal care solutions.

Two projects, one using cell phones to deliver to expectant mothers in Kenya electronic vouchers for pre-natal care and transportation, the other aimed at promoting maternal and child health in northern Nigeria, will receive $250,000 grants from the Saving Lives at Birth Partnership.

Both projects were motivated by the childbirth-related deaths of important women in the lives of the African-based project innovators.

Although Kenyan Sam Agutu and Nigerian Aminu Gamawa come from different countries and backgrounds, they share a common passionate commitment - to save the lives of women giving birth and guarantee infants a healthy start.

Agutu's sister died in childbirth on the way to the hospital. Gamawa's mother died in childbirth too. Both men say the deaths were avoidable if better care had been available. They've channeled that devastating loss into powerful motivation to improve the odds for women and their babies.

Sam Agutu's Kenyan group, Changamka Microhealth based in Nairobi, is proposing e-vouchers delivered through cell phones to encourage women to seek care during their pregnancy and at birth.

In remote areas health care costs and distance to clinics are barriers for women. The e-vouchers can be used to pay for pre-natal care and transportation.

"Research shows that not receiving adequate care is a leading cause of maternal mortality in the developing world. Mothers who attend their required ante-natal visits and who deliver in hospital stand an infinitely greater chance of surviving than those who do not" said Mr. Agutu. "We will use Saving Lives at Birth's support to validate the effectiveness of e-vouchers, an SMS informational campaign and a transport subsidy in encouraging pregnant women to seek health care".

The Development Research and Projects Centre in Nigeria is relying on persuasion and experience to change attitudes of some Islamic opinion leaders in the country's Muslim northern states.

Each program will receive a $250,000 seed grant from the Saving Lives at Birth partnership, which includes Grand Challenges Canada, USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank.

(Source: Business daily Africa)
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Josh Nesbit was a student at Stanford University preparing for medical school, when two conversations with a doctor and a community health worker in Malawi changed the course of his life.

“I was doing HIV research at a clinic in Malawi, in 2007, when I met a doctor who was covering a catchment area of 100,000 people single-handedly, and a community health worker who walked 35 miles to the hospital each week to hand-deliver patient reports”, said Nesbit. But he also realized that he had a better mobile signal at that community health worker's home than he did in Palo Alto, California. It became clear to him that this new mobile infrastructure could be harnessed to bridge gaps and coordinate health care services.

Inspired by volunteer village health workers in rural Malawi, Medic Mobile was launched in 2009 by Josh Nesbit and three co-founders while they were still students. According to the organization's website, Medic Mobile develops technologies such as easy-to-use medical record systems and SIM card applications to help health workers communicate and coordinate patient care, and provide diagnostics using low-cost mobile technology. Medic Mobile believes that well-coordinated and connected health systems can save lives.

In June 2011, they announced the first SIM card application for health care, created with support from The Maternal Health Task Force and PSI. These applications run on any GSM device, from the simplest US$15 handsets to smart phones. Using SIM apps, they plan to bring structured information exchange to the “last mile”, supporting health workers and patients. Today, Mobile Medic has over 30 partnerships in 15 countries to improve health care delivery in extremely resource poor conditions.

An article on the website of Global Pulse, the international health journal of the American Medical Student Association, cites World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a shortfall of 4.3 million health care workers in the developing world. Medic Mobile believes that the intelligent deployment of mobile technology can help improve access and outcomes, even with this lack of health professionals.

Mobile Media now works with more than 30 international and local partners. The group has established programs in 70% of Malawi’s districts and implemented projects in twelve countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The results continued - drug stock reporting improved from less than 35% to over 80% across 10 districts in Malawi, costs decreased four times and efficiency increased 112 times for community-level treatment support.

(Source: AudienceScapes)
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In the 10 months since the organization TeleSehat opened a second pilot telemedicine center in the Pakistani city of Gujar Khan, more than 3,000 patients have been treated. Such numbers point to the great potential of telemedicine to bridge the healthcare divide in Pakistan.

Due to an insufficient healthcare budget, a shortage of good doctors, and poor, ill-equipped public hospitals, Pakistan is unable to provide all its citizens with even basic healthcare services. Given the sheer lack of healthcare facilities in remote villages, villagers suffering with serious illnesses and health emergencies often have no other option but to travel extensive distances into the main cities. As the cost of traveling is prohibitive for many who survive on meager incomes, these villagers either rack up great debts or forego medical attention entirely.

Closing the healthcare gap between those who live near medical facilities and those who do not was the impetus behind TeleSehat (‘Sehat’ is Urdu for ‘Health’). Asad Karim (also the CEO of a local technology firm, Comcept) and Syed Mahmood Hussain launched TeleSehat in the summer of 2008. They founded the organization to establish telemedicine centers to deliver healthcare to Pakistanis living in inaccessible locations.

Telemedicine is not a completely new concept to Pakistan, and certain projects have been quite noteworthy. Launched in 2001, the Tele-Health Programme, for instance, was the country’s first telemedicine initiative. Jaroka Tele-healthcare, Sehat First and TeleDoctor, all similar local telemedicine initiatives, soon followed.

But the question remains: Can telemedicine prove successful in a country like Pakistan?
“Telemedicine is the only hope for countries like Pakistan”, insists TeleSehat’s head of business development, Nabeel Ahmad Malik. “However, this can only prove successful if the service delivery model is designed in a way that it suits all the stakeholders, which includes hospitals, doctors, TeleSehat itself, the local population and the respective government”.

(Source: AudienceScapes)
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His Majesty King Abdullah on Saturday stressed the importance of ICT tools in improving the quality of healthcare services.

Referring to the e-Health Programme “Hakeem” launched at Prince Hamzah Public Hospital on Friday, the King credited the successful implementation of the programme in part to Jordan’s broadband capacity.

He also acknowledged the support of Cisco Systems, noting that the company first came to Jordan in 2002 to help the Kingdom improve its education sector.

His Majesty made the remarks during a special roundtable session on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting to inaugurate the first healthcare ICT taskforce, with the participation of Cisco executives and experts from local ICT companies.

Addressing the participants, King Abdullah noted that forming a healthcare ICT taskforce would help in empowering Jordan’s ICT companies and promoting them locally, regionally and internationally, in addition to providing job opportunities for Jordanians, and promoting and strengthening the country’s health services

Speaking at the opening of the session, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers noted that the ICT sector in Jordan is witnessing impressive growth, pointing out that the number of ICT companies in the country grew from 20 in 2003 to 450 this year.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Tahboub, chairman of the Information Technology Association of Jordan-inj@j, noted that the taskforce will be focused on achieving multiple objectives, including rapidly replicating the Hakeem programme nationwide and positioning Jordan as a regional hub for ICT solutions in the healthcare sector.

The Healthcare ICT task force is an initiative of int@j, the King Abdullah Fund for Development, Cisco, and local partners.

Also at the roundtable session, the King presented Chambers with Al Hussein Decoration for Distinguished Contribution of the First Degree in recognition of his efforts to strengthen Jordan’s education and ICT sectors.

(Source: Jordan Times)
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Specifically, the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, an agency under the Health Ministry in Nigeria responsible for development and strengthening of primary healthcare nationwide, was formed to support the promotion and sustainability of high quality primary healthcare system and achieve the Millennium Development Goals relating to the health sector.

Alongside efforts by the World Health Organization and the various UN agencies that deal with health-related issues to improve the healthcare delivery system, concerted efforts are being made to reduce the differential access to technology of the developed and the developing world.

It is at the convergence of health and technology that eHealth initiatives evolved, creating an unprecedented opportunity to improve access to services and innovations. So what is the way out? Enter the mobile health (mHealth) initiative.

Stakeholders at a recent mobile health (mHealth) workshop put together by MTN Nigeria, voted in favor of adoption of the mobile healthcare system. Already, a United Nations report notes that this system has capacity to help meet four of the eight Millennium Development Goals, MDGs. Basically, mHealth broadly encompasses the use of mobile telecommunications devices and multimedia technologies as they are integrated within increasingly mobile and wireless healthcare delivery system.

In order words, it is the practice of medical and public healthcare supported by a mobile device, including the use of voice, data and SMS. By adopting mHealth in the healthcare delivery system, many more people, will potentially be reached and the health of the people and communities will be greatly enhanced.

This approach is particularly important due to the rapid adoption of mobile phone technology in developing countries. While mHealth has matured in industrialised nations, the field is still evolving in a developing country such as Nigeria. But argument for it is strong. As mobile technology grows, more and more people acquire mobile phones and other mobile devices, making them part of their everyday lives.

It then becomes easier for medical personnel to interact with them and provide health services, obtain health information to aid their researches and make it easy for them to provide the right medical solutions to health challenges in remote locations.

(Source: Vanguard NewsPaper)
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In less than two years, the South African AIDS-education project Young Africa Live is engaging hundreds of thousands of young people in sensitive discussions about love, sex and HIV/AIDS. Earlier this summer, the project released findings from its “Youth Sex Survey”, unprecedented in both size and content. The survey, conducted on the mobile platform that is the centerpiece of Young Africa Live, pulls back the curtain on what young South Africans think about crucial issues affecting their sexual health.

The Young Africa Live survey received more than 130,000 responses from the mobile platform’s users, the majority of whom are between 16 and 24. Findings included a high percentage (44 percent) of South African youth admitting they are sexually active at the same time that they are significantly concerned about HIV/AIDS – 81 percent of respondents indicated they equate “not telling a sexual partner that you carry the virus” with outright murder. In good news for the government’s promotion of circumcision as part of an overall HIV prevention program, a huge number of females – 78 percent -- stated that they prefer a circumcised partner.

Young Africa Live included some superficial questions in the poll, like whether guys and girls can be “just friends”. Placing serious and entertaining content side by side is the content formula Young Africa Live employs across its mobile platform – a combination that has proved successful for building an audience of more than 400,00 active users.

Young Africa Live’s founding organization, the Praekelt Foundation, didn’t want to brand the project as an “AIDS portal”. They avoided explicitly describing the platform as related to AIDS because of the stigma associated with the disease and the fact that many South Africans, particularly those who do not know their HIV-status, may not identify with that label.  “Our approach is not to preach, but to allow discussion, dialogue and community support”, says Marcha Neethling, Head of Operations for Praekelt.

The concept for Young Africa Live evolved from the recognition that South African youth are becoming avid users of mobile portals like Vodafone Live and MTNPlay. The Johannesburg-based Praekelt Foundation, which leverages mobile technology to improve the “health and well-being of people living in poverty”, was looking for a way to educate young South Africans about HIV/AIDS.  According to Neethling, they saw an opportunity in the fact that millions of young people use these mobile portals to chat, download music, read up on celebrity and sports news, participate in competitions, and win prizes. 

(Source: AudienceScapes)

The Kenya government in partnership with HP East Africa and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) launched a project that will enable health workers in the field to detect and manage disease outbreaks through smart phones.

The move follows a donation of 250 HP Palm Pre-Smart Phones which are the first of their kind in the continent that will facilitate early detection and response to communicable public health threats in the country through mobile health monitoring technology.

The phones are part of 1 million U.S. dollar worth of technological support that HP will be extending to the government through the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) program.

Director of Public Health and Sanitation at the Ministry of Public Health Shanaaz Sharif said the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) system which has been developed in the past two months will simplify health workers' task of reporting in real time, health events that occur at the local level. "Due to technological and personnel constraints only about 5,000 of the 7,000 health facilities in the country report and maintain a record of health events on a real time basis, but now any health worker with a simple mobile handset will be enable to report", Sharif told journalists in Nairobi.

He said members of the public will also be allowed to report on health events but only through the internet. "The IDSR will enable the government to collect information in real time to help in the decision making for the appropriate public health action intervention. Mobile phones will be used to transmit raw data and then the data will entered, stored, analyzed and interpreted in real time via the computer", Sharif said.

The project will enable health workers to collect data through a web operating system application (webOS), upload the same, analyze and share the data with organizations like National Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections Control Program (Nascop). "When health workers at the local level suspect of any disease they are expected to report this via the system to the national level so that public health officials to analyze, interpret and compare the data with prevailing trends", Sharif said.

(Source: XinhuaNews)

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Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-17) , in Durban South Africa, attendees at the ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change in Ghana have renewed calls for global leaders to recognize the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

An outcome document asks that ITU, as the UN specialized agency for ICTs, lead a coalition urging delegates to look to the enormous potential of ICT solutions to cut emissions across all sectors. The document calls for the adoption of a ‘closed loop’ approach to manufacturing and recycling which will reduce the need to extract and process raw materials. It also asks for recognition of the value of ICTs in monitoring deforestation, crop patterns and other environmental phenomena.

Specific mention of ICTs in the COP-17 negotiating text, along with the adoption of an agreed methodology for measuring the carbon footprint of ICT equipment and its inclusion in National Adaptation/Mitigation Plans, would provide an incentive to the ICT industry to invest in developing countries, help reduce the digital divide, and at the same time help fight climate change – a win-win scenario. ITU is already actively developing a methodology that could serve as a reliable and accurate global benchmark for assessing the carbon footprint of a wide range of ICT equipment.

Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General, ITU, stressed ITU’s commitment to providing the technical know-how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. “It is now clear to most observers that ICTs have a very important role to play here. Recognition of this at the international level will provide countries with a solid argument to roll out climate change strategies with a strong ICT element”, he said.

Speaking at the opening of the Ghana symposium, Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said: “Today, a world without ICTs is unthinkable. ICTs are integrated into almost all parts of our society and economy. Yet while the increasingly widespread use of ICTs has changed people’s lives dramatically and boosted economic growth, the success of technology means it is itself a growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, ICTs probably provide the most significant opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the major high emissions industries of energy generation, waste disposal, building and transport. This is a message we must carry to COP-17”.

(Source: ITU Newsroom)

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Increasing women's access to quality midwifery has become a focus of global efforts to realize the right of every woman to the best possible health care during pregnancy and childbirth. A first step is assessing the situation.

The State of World's Midwifery 2011: Delivering Health, Saving Lives , supported by 30 partners, provides the first comprehensive analysis of midwifery services and issues in countries where the needs are greatest.

The report provides new information and data gathered from 58 countries in all regions of the world. Its analysis confirms that the world lacks some 350,000 skilled midwives -- 112,000 in the neediest 38 countries surveyed -- to fully meet the needs of women around the world. The report explores a range of issues related to building up this key health workforce.

This page includes access to the full report in three languages, as well as related resources, applications, bibliographical information, individual country profiles and stories of midwives.

(Source: UNFPA)

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The scheme, which is funded by Department of Telecom's (DoT) Universal Service Obligation Funds (USOFs), is for mobile value-added services and information and communication technologies (ICT) related livelihood skills for Women's Self Help Groups.

"The scheme is initiated as a gender budget scheme, it adopts an innovative approach to connect rural women with the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, by involving women Self Help Groups (SHGs)," Patil told reporters.

It will also serve the purpose of increasing the tele density, as well as broad band connectivity in rural areas, enabling them to join the cyber community and in this way, bridge the digital divide, states the details of the scheme.

With the creation of ICT skills sets in rural areas, over a period of time, these areas can become centres for the consumption and production of various ICT goods and services, including hubs for processing outsourced work, it added.

Patil added, "Real development cannot take root if it bypasses women, who represent the very pivot around which social change takes shape."

(Source:One world South Asia News)

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The device used in the Massachusetts National Hospital did hit the tumor diagnosis in 96% of patients .

With only a mobile phone, a thin needle and a small molecular magnetic resonance apparatus it is possible to detect cancerous tumors. This was explained by the doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in an article published in the journal “Science Translational Medicine”.

Thanks to this innovative system used by doctors could succeed in the diagnosis of cancer in 96% of patients, a figure higher than with the traditional biopsy.

"The system prevents patients undergo to procedures that are painful and potentially dangerous", said Cesar M. Castro from Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a member of the team that developed the procedure.

Through the collection of a portion of tumor tissue, which is subjected to an "immunohistochemistry" (a test that uses a specific procedure that "mark" the existence of cancer cells), is how they do the diagnostic of molecular analysis fast. To this are added biopsies and in some cases, previous surgeries.

The nuclear magnetic resonance micro device used “nanoparticles” as sensors that measure the chemicals in the cells and the device is connected to a phone, so that doctors can measure and read the data next to the patient's bed.

After scanning the tissues from patients to detect the expression of nine key proteins, the doctors correctly identified to 44 patients who had malignant tumors, and each of the diagnoses was confirmed with conventional biopsy.

(Source: Peru 21 news paper)

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The Ministry of Environment and the Telecommunications company Claro, have signed an agreement that aims to create a platform for inter-agency collaboration to implement mechanisms for coordination and cooperation, promoting the activities of mutual interest and benefit, for the purpose of disseminating issues linked to environmental management and conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

In this context, CLARO has been developing some time ago its iniciative "I recycle, I'm Claro" initiative that seeks to promote concern for environmental care in the population through responsible disposal of cell phones, batteries and accessories in disuse , nationwide.

In Peru, electronic waste (RAEE) such as cell phones, for example, generate about 250 tons of electronic waste, stored improperly, cause environmental damage and health of people due to the high toxicity of its small components produced based on metals and minerals such as aluminum, copper, iron, zinc, lead, tin, among others.

In this regard, the Ministry of Environment undertakes to support all initiatives and events undertaken in the framework of this strategic alliance for the benefit of a better quality of life and environment for all Peruvians.

 For its part, CLARO, through such actions, seeks to implement the necessary mechanisms to strengthen the culture of recycling in the country, while providing all the Peruvians a sustainable alternative to discard all those teams that are no longer used in a responsible manner, without causing further damage to the environment.

(Source:MINAM - Peru)

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With this project of education, the Dominican Telecommunications Institute (Indotel) next to the Orange Foundation, and Dynamic Stimulation and Digital Literacy (EDAD) have dual purpose: to prevent cognitive decline in older persons and promote the use of technology systems for social integration.

The convention was attended by the Chairman of the Board of Indotel, Dr. David Perez Taveras; Indotel executive director, Dr. Joelle Exarhakos, Mr. Andrés Ferreira and Manuel Gimeno from the Orange Foundation, which discussed the possibility of implement this project without cost in the digital classrooms that Indotel has created.

Older people form a group that usually live outside of the Information Society, despite constituting an increasingly important part of our population and have much free time at home, they can take advantage of ICT access to information, administrative management or shop online from home, contact with other seniors or their family members and enrich their leisure activities. In addition, the use of computer requires a proactive that can stimulate the cognitive abilities of older people but also by helping to keep the mind in the exercise.

To meet these needs, researchers of the Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), with the support of the Orange Foundation, has developed this draft of Stimulation Dynamics and Digital Literacy ( EDAD) and in alliance with Indotel to use the Computer Training Center as a platform to teach these courses in the 32 provinces of the country, encouraging the use of technology systems for the social integration and prevent cognitive decline in older people.

More advanced mobile technology can do even more, such as checking on patients, keeping records, improving diagnosis and treatment in the field, and letting community health workers consult general practitioners and specialists for guidance."With mobile technologies for health, called ‘mhealth’ or ‘mobile health,’ we’re extending capabilities to where they don’t exist today", says David Aylward, who heads mHealth Alliance, a partnership founded by the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation.

"At the most basic level, mobile phones can be used to keep track of people, call for emergency assistance, remind them of appointments and share information", says Julian Schweitzer, PhD, former Chair of The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Care (PMNCH) and the Chair of the Finance Working Group for the UN Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, launched in September. "But then you can layer on things like check lists, protocols, the steps to ensure a safe birth and action instructions in particular circumstances", says Dr. Schweitzer.

Used by midwives in rural, urban slums and isolated areas, cell phones can also be attached to diagnostic devices, including those used for remote fetal monitoring or remote wireless ultrasound. This lets a midwife or health worker know in advance that a mother must get to a clinic. They can also be used for recording births and deaths or assuring that both women and children get the care they need when and where they need it.

"In the near future, wireless diagnostics like stethoscopes, blood pressure, temperature and insulin monitors, and ultrasounds will enable remote diagnosis and treatment far from the closest doctor or clinic", says Mr. Aylward.

(Source: PMNCH and World Health Organization)

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