Mobile Engagement Resource Center

Global mobile health apps market to nearly double in next year

Roni — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:40:32 +0000

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, according to research2guidance, a German firm that specializes in research into mobile markets.

Nonetheless, the market for mobile health apps is in its “embryonic state” and has plenty of room for growth. The market’s anticipated $1.3 billion size in 2012 is only a fraction of the overall $6 trillion global healthcare market, according to the report.

Getting the Message? Police Track Phones with Silent SMS

Roni — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:12:48 +0000

Also known as Flash-SMS, the Silent SMS uses an invisible return signal, or “ping”. Developers from the Silent Services company, who created some of the first software for sending this type of SMS, explain: Sending a Silent SMS is like sending a normal SMS, except that the mobile does not see the message it has received. The SMS’s information is modified, within the data coding scheme, so that the user who receives the message doesn’t notice anything. A Silent SMS can help police to detect a mobile without the person concerned being aware of the request.

Agency using cellphones for quick job placements in Japan

Roni — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:47:37 +0000

Jobs are now just a phone away! A placement agency in Japan is using phone handsets’ global positioning system to quickly match workers to temporary jobs, doing away with interviews and other formalities.

Read the article economictimes

Sweden races to beat US on mobile phone payments

Roni — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:10:16 +0000

Sweden is racing to become the first developed country whose people regularly pay for things with their mobile phones.

The country’s four leading mobile phone companies will soon launch a combined mobile wallet service, which will allow payments at shops, between users, and to vending and parking machines. The scheme uses “near field communications” to allow to payments to be made by simply tapping a phone against another or against a vendor’s terminal.

Read the article at globalpost

ATM Fraud Prompts Text Alerts

Roni — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:33:08 +0000

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.

Tom Wills, a fraud analyst for Javelin Strategy & Research who’s based in Singapore, says institutions in other markets, such as the U.S. and Europe, can learn from DBS’s example. “Offering SMS alerts to customers for ATM withdrawals is a smart move for any financial institution, because it takes advantage of the strengthened transaction security that mobile out-of-band messaging offers,” he says.

Read the story at bankinfosecurity

How mHealth Can Bring Cheaper Health Care To All

Roni — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:30:50 +0000

The average auto refractor–that clunky-looking device eye doctors use to pinpoint your prescription–weighs about 40 pounds, costs $10,000, and is virtually impossible to find in a rural village in the developing world. As a result, some half a billion people are living with vision problems, which make it tough to read and work.

Ramesh Raskar knew fixing this problem would be tricky. It required a new way of thinking about eye tests–and a new kind of device, one powerful enough to support high-resolution visuals, cheap enough to scale, and simple enough to be used by just about anyone. The MIT professor briefly toyed with stand-alone options, which were complicated and costly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out an unexpected savior: his iPhone.

Read the story at fastcompany

Rural women learn alphabets through mobile phones

Roni — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:41:10 +0000

Suman, a rural woman living in Gaura village, today uses mobile phone for twin purposes — for communication and enhancing learning skill. Not only Suman but many other rural women, like Jyoti and Sunita of Chiraigaon and Urmila of Prahaladpur, are also using mobile phones as a tool for learning alphabets and calculation.

“I was illiterate. But today I am learning how to read and write at the education centre,” said Munni Devi, a native of Mustafabad. Her illiterate husband works as a labourer. She wants to educate her children properly. In fact, these women are associated with project ‘Mahila Shakti’, a programme of women empowerment through education initiative with effective communication mechanism. The project is facilitated by local NGO Human Welfare Association (HWA).

Read the article at timesofindia

Kenya Has Mobile Health App Fever

Roni — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:14:09 +0000

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 fact that 50 percent of all Kenyan banking is already done on mobile phones—suggesting that the population is ready to go mobile with health care, too.

Text-Messaging to Emergency Patients Might Reduce Their Alcohol Consumption

Roni — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:01:08 +0000

Text-messaging might be an effective way for health care providers to help young adults reduce heavy drinking, according to a study funded by a research grant by the Emergency Medicine Foundation. The findings will be published in the March 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are now available online.

“When we used text-messaging to collect drinking data and to offer immediate feedback and support to young adults discharged from the emergency department, they drank less,” said lead study author Brian Suffoletto, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in Pa. “Each day in the U.S., more than 50,000 adults ages 18 to 24 visit hospital emergency departments and more than a third of them report current alcohol abuse or dependence. If not addressed, hazardous or binge drinking can lead to high rates of avoidable injuries and death.”

Read the article at wctv

Digital technology driving global social change

Roni — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:38:02 +0000

Global events in 2011 demonstrated the impact that technology plays in driving social change movements. A new Walden University survey of 11 countries shows that most adults in countries around the world (89%, on average) agree that technology can turn a cause into a movement faster than anything else can. These views were particularly prevalent in Spain (93%), Canada(91%), Brazil (91%), Great Britain (91%) and China (91%).

The Social Change Impact Report: Global Survey was commissioned by Walden University and conducted online by Harris Interactive in September 2011. A continuation from the American survey released in the fall, the Global Survey includes the perspectives of more than 12,000 adults in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, Spainand the United States and describes their perceptions on the importance of social change, the top issues in their country and the future of social change.

Read the article at techjournal