According to a UNAIDS World Aids day report 2011, the new HIV infections in India have fallen by 56%.For a country with the largest number of AIDS cases, technology has been playing a major role in keeping India aware.
According to a report from Pyramid Research early this year, there are about 200 million mobile healthcare (mHealth) applications in use today, and this is expected to rise in the year 2012.
Several mHealth initiatives have successfully catered to the masses in India to spread awareness about safe sex, family planning or ailments; with a simple sms.
“Mobile penetration in urban India is around 86 percent which facilitates pilot projects based on mobile technology to reach out to couples in need of family planning, ”says to Rohit Bansal, Head Social Impact Programme, ThoughtWorks India.
Take for example, Cycletel, which is a text messaging service that provides awareness about Standard Days Method (SDM), which is a non- intrusive method for preventing unplanned pregnancy.
“The text messaging service is more accessible by end-customers than any other web-based application,” adds Bansal.
At present, the mobile application is in its testing phase in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
Several other mHealth initiatives such as eMOCHA, Freedom HIV/AIDS have explored the use of mobile technologies to improve public health.
eMOCHA is designed to assist health programs in developing countries improve provider communication and education, as well as patient care, by coordinating wireless devices with local server-based clinical training and patient care support services.
Freedom HIV/AIDS is a social initiative by ZMQ which consists of four mobile games targeting different mindsets and psychology of mobile users.
A study has also proven that 70 percent people worldwide are interested in having access to at least one mHealth application, and they're willing to pay for it.
As reported in: http://www.cio.in/news/mhealth-making-india-aware-201162011