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Sep. 10, 2008

The United Nations has been pioneering a mobile health (mHealth) initiative in eleven African nations, using mobile devices and wireless access for such things as aiding in the immunization of children against measles.

The U.N.'s new program has been so successful that the foundation and its partner, Vodafone, now plans to expand the initiative to more than twenty sub-Saharan countries by the end of 2008.

Overall, the initiative has shown to be effective in delivering health care in remote and resource-poor environments through the quick and efficient collection of health data.

"Wireless devices can help health-care workers in a sort of early warning system for epidemics, while also tracking other health data," said Mitul Shah, senior director of technology partnerships at the United Nations.

Shah added that the mHealth program started two years ago with pilots in Kenya and Zambia. In Kenya, health officials used the EpiSurveyor technology to investigate and track a polio outbreak. In Zambia, EpiSurveyor was used to track the coverage rate of a measles vaccination program, ensuring that all children were properly vaccinated.

The countries that expect to be included in the mHealth initiative by the end of this year include Benin, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, Botswana, Burundi, Chad, Eritrea, Gabon, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania and Togo.

Other agencies participating in the U.N.'s Mobile Health for Development program include the World Health Organization, DataDyne.org and a few ministries of health in those respective countries.

DataDyne.org developed an open-source program, EpiSurveyor, for gathering health data on mobile devices.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: The United Nations.