BusinessWeek has a piece on the combination of medicine and cell phones that sheds light on some possibilities—predominately in the patient empowerment arena.
A personal mobile scanner that “plugs into the phone, which beams the data to the computer, generating an image that can be transmitted to a doctor or hospital far away.”
The cell phone may also be able to act as a constant monitor of vital signs. A patient could also use the iPhone for mobile access to health information for a yearly nominal fee.
This may be a bit audacious, but I appreciate the goal:
“The cell phone is going to solve rural health-care problems, whether it’s rural India or rural Indiana,” says Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research’s program manager for external research in biomedical computing.
