India’s Aadhar Bhalinge is the winner of m2Work, a World Bank-sponsored online challenge seeking the best ideas for spurring the job-creation potential of mobile phones. The competition organized by Nokia and infoDev, a World Bank innovation and technology entrepreneurship program, drew a total of 939 ideas, 96% of which came from developing and emerging economies. [...]
AIDS related deaths account for close to 60% of all total deaths annually and mobile phone penetration has doubled over the last 10 years. It is for these reasons that the World Health Organisation (WHO) embarked on an investigation to determine whether mobile phone technology could be used to transform the delivery of health care [...]
In news that probably won’t surprise parents of text-obsessed teenagers, Canadians sent an average of almost 2,500 SMS messages every second last year, for a total of about 78 billion. That figure was up almost 40 per cent from 2010, when the texting tally hit 56.4 billion messages. Read the story at ctv.ca
We are all used to mobile phones that can call, take a picture or capture a video and/or browse the internet and other services of the like. A company called Mobisante has changed that course by developing the world’s first Smartphone-based ultrasound imaging system called the MobiUS™SP1 system. According to Mobisante “This award winning device, [...]
Across many malaria-endemic areas in rural Africa, the communication gap between managers, health workers, and patients is a significant barrier to efficient malaria control. The rapid expansion of mobile network coverage and the widespread availability of basic handsets have the potential to substantively bridge the communication gap. Text messaging, as the least-expensive mobile phone function [...]
Barclays became the first bank to launch such an app for its own customers last week. Now the wider banking industry – in the form of the Payments Council – is in the throes of setting up a database which can link all bank accounts to their owners’ mobile phone numbers. This in turn will [...]
Farmers will from now get fertilisers and seed allocation through their mobile phones, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, has said. Adesina made this known yesterday in Abuja while fielding questions from newsmen forum, where he said the strategy was couched in the new fertilisers voucher scheme. The minister said the [...]
The global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion, according to a new report. While a projected doubling in growth is certainly impressive, it pales in comparison to what the mobile health apps market experienced in 2011, when it grew seven-fold to $718 million, [...]
Two suspects have been charged for the roles they played in a $1 million [U.S. $774,594.06] ATM skimming scheme that hit some 700 DBS Bank customers in Singapore. In response to the attacks, DBS, one of the largest retail banks in South East Asia, last week announced plans to launch a real-time SMS/text alert service. [...]
Mobile health platforms are fast emerging in Kenya, where one startup’s newly launched mobile health platform is attracting nearly 1,000 downloads daily, and the dominant telecom, Safaricom, has forged a partnership that will give its 18 million subscribers access to doctors. A World Bank official sees significant promise from such efforts, pointing to the [...]
