On my recent trip to Mobile World Congress 2010 I had an opportunity to talk to key people in the mobile industry and share thoughts on the future of mobiles in the field of medicine as a measure of cost effective health care. While the big players (viz. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Motorola) were still not ready to explore the potential of mobility in medicine, other small players already have tried their hand on this with an overwhelming response, more so in the emerging markets like Africa. The simple solution being text based.

FrontlineSMS: Medic is a successful project (by ITU) which include sending reminder messages to patient’s phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a pre-natal check-up. Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines. It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars — and can help improve and even save the lives of millions of people.

Other to note was the GSMA winner of its Embedded Mobile Competition, Cinterion’s System One being named winner of the Best Embedded Mobile End-to-End Service category. System One is a sleep therapy system designed to treat obstructive Sleep Apnea.

The potential is great and can help save the government millions of dollars to provide cost effective health care. In my next post I will highlight how we can gather data and maintain a EMR via using mobiles.