Your Old Phone Can Change The World

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Mobile

Published May 18, 2009 @ 06:11AM PT

(photo courtesy of ICT4D.at on Flickr)

Every day, more than 450,000 mobile phones find their way into desk drawers or trash cans around the US. But while these discarded phones may mean little to their owners, they can be put to work on the front lines of global health. Hope Phones is a new campaign by FrontlineSMS:Medic to transform your old phone into a tool for developing a more equitable, horizontal global health system.

I wrote a post a few months ago called "The Cellphone That Could Change the World." The post was focused on some new innovations coming out of UCLA that were poised to turn the camera lens on an average mobile into a portable diagnostics lab. More than that, however, the post was a speculation about how the pieces of the emerging mobile health (mHealth) field seemed to be converging, with powerful implications:

It's 2011, and a lot has changed in our approach to global health promotion. First, we've established a Department of Development that recognizes that prevention goes a lot further than treatment, and has begun to make strategic investments in technology and training around the world. Michael Kleinman is the director, with Paul Farmer as his Senior Adviser, of course. One of the early initiatives was the promotion of a global health corps which was focused on training community health workers, the backbone of most health systems. To enable even more effective home care, these community health workers have cell-phones outfitted with the LUCAS mobile test system above, and use Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS technology to immediately send results to a global epidemiological database from which regional and international teams can analyze trends in disease prevalence. Nonprofits and national agencies consult with the doctors monitoring the global database to design interventions that strategically head-off possible epidemics. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies who have negotiated lower rates with national governments, mediated by partners like the Clinton Foundation, employ a partnership with Coca-Cola to use their delivery trucks to get life saving drugs to even the most inaccessible regions. And of course, patients being treated can use their own cheap mobile phones to send messages to health workers about updates in their condition.

One of the most exciting developments since I wrote the post has been the emergence of FrontlineSMS:Medic, a collaboration that formed when a number of undergraduate and graduate students realized that they were working on pieces of the same puzzle.

FrontlineSMS:Medic uses recycle mobile phones, laptops, and the FrontlineSMS software to create health networks which enable rural clinics to provide better, more extensive care. From the Hope Phones press release:

Its first pilot project distributed cell phones to community health workers in 100 rural villages in Malawi, saving thousands of dollars in travel and hospital costs and doubling the number of patients treated for tuberculosis in the catchment area.

The organization uses FrontlineSMS, a free, open-source software program that enables large-scale, two-way text messaging using only a laptop, a GSM modem, and cell phones. Their pilot implementation model places a laptop running FrontlineSMS in a central clinic and distributes cell phones to healthcare workers to coordinate care with patients in peripheral villages. Their programs currently serve 1.2 million patients in Malawi and Uganda. Future development of the FrontlineSMS:Medic platform will encompass electronic medical records and diagnostics at the point of care.

The campaign works by enabling you to print a barcode, throw your old phone in the mail (shipping is free) to phone refurbisher The Wireless Source. The money that The Wireless Source would have paid you is instead converted to phones that can be used by clinics around the world. The average phone used by FrontlineSMS:Medic only costs $10 and can bring 50 families on the grid.

“Hope Phones lets you give your old cell phone new life on the frontline of global health. That’s powerful,” said Josh Nesbit, Executive Director of FrontlineSMS:Medic. “Just one, old Blackberry will allow us to purchase 3-5 cell phones for healthcare workers, bringing another 250 families onto the health grid via SMS. Old phones can help save lives.”

To learn more about the campaign, check out HopePhones.org or use the widget below.

Simple ways to help:

1. Visit www.HopePhones.org and donate your old phones.
2. Spread the word!

• Email your friends, family, classmates and coworkers.
• Post on Facebook and become a fan of the Hope Phones page.
• Tell the world on Twitter - use #HopePhones as a tag so we can thank you.
• Let us know if you want the Hope Phones widget for your website or blog.

3. Contact us at info@hopephones.org if you’d like to help set up a Hope Phones collection center.