The Wall Street Journal features the use of SMS for providing basic health information. Besides the pin-up project, SexInfo, the report describes several applications for appointment reminders and other treatment adherence behaviors. Other projects include psychological support for people with bulimia in Germany, adjunctive therapy for people who are quitting smoking in New Zealand, diabetes management in Scotland and a clinical trial in Africa to improve tuberculosis treatment in rural villages.
For more on mobile applications for health - and ones that are pushing the envelope. And ways to be thinking about going mobile for change.
It is interesteing to note how a small piece of TEXT can be used for doing customer service, tech support and in our case helping people with addictions to recover.
Hummingbytes Inc. (www.hummingbytes.com) lately implemented a SMS based health care system for a local hospital in Massachussetts, USA. People with addiction can send their concerns or questions via TEXT to a US short code. We deliver the message to the hospital on a web front end. Coaches or doctors reply to the SMS from the web, which is then delivered back to the originator on their cell phones. Simple, yet far reaching solution and most of all anonymous !
There are lot of other applications that can be created with SMS on one end and the web on the other end. SMS based Q&A system for conferences, SMS based technical support etc.
Posted by: Kris Subramanian | 17 January 2009 at 10:36 AM