Mobile-Global Health

Please distribute this to your friends who could be interested in improving the health of the world with Mobile Technology

I direct a WHO Collaborating Centre and am professor of Epidemiology of Pittsburgh.  We have developed in our center a Global Health Supercourse. This represents a network of over 50,000 faculty in 172 countries.  Our mission is to double training in global health and prevention in the next 2 years. We will accomplish this as we have collected over 4500 PowerPoint lectures, on global health and prevention in an open source free lecture library. Last year we taught over 1 million students. We taught more students than all global health programs in the world combined (www.pitt.edu/~super1/). Now we want to marry our work with those interested in Mobile Technology to build a new discipline called Mobile-Global health

Recently I attended a  wonderful meeting in Las Vegas on Mobile Health.  During the past few weeks I have been thinking about using Mobile Cell phones in  global health.  It was a very exciting meeting, that showed the power and future of Mobile Technology.  Discussions with the participants revealed a wonderful new horizon for Mobile technology  in general, and the potential impact of Mobile Global Health to improve the health of the world.

When most people think of Mobile Health, they think in the context of high tech, and clinical medicine, e.g. using cell phone images for distance diagnosis.  To my knowledge Mobile health has not been thought about in  the context of Mobile-Global Health.  Perhaps the most exiting component is as follows:

I can sit at my desk in Pittsburgh and reach almost anyone in the world using my Mobile phone and the costs will be pennies.  I can collect information about disease from phones world wide, I can share lecture materials, I can warn people about impending health dangers.

World wide there are 6.2 billion people and 4.5 billion cell phones.  In Mumbai India there are 1.5 cell phones for every person.  There never has been a technology that could reach so many people in an instant, for such a low cost.  Mobile Global Health will revolutionize global health. However, we have to think differently, we cannot think about doing the same old, same old, but putting this through Mobiles.  We have to think about what should  we do when we can reach everyone in the world.

We have developed a Mobile-Global Supercourse White Page, with leaders from the Mobile Health Industry and would appreciate your comments below.

Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity (Wilson)

Mobile-Global Health  

Mission:  To double the amount of training about Global health by the year 2012 in developing and Developed countries by using Mobile Devises

Problems:

·         ·        Since 1945 Life expectancy world wide has increased 30 years

·         ·        The major increase has been the result of Prevention, not curative medicine

·         ·        Sadly, few people are trained in prevention and disasters mitigation, e.g. in 6 years medical school education in India, there is no formal training in global health in prevention, despite considerable interest world wide

Solution: Mobile-Global Supercourse

·         ·        4.2 billion cell phones for 6.2 Billion people, We can reach virtually anyone across the world with the message of global health and prevention

·         ·        Supercourse is a network of 50,000 faculty, about to be expanded to 3 million

·         ·        We  have collected 4500 PowerPoint lectures on Global Health and Prevention from 20 Nobel prize winners, the former head of the NIH and CDC, and the former US Surgeon General in a lecture library

·         ·        The lectures taught over 1 million students last year, our H1N1 lecture made over 50 million people aware of HINI

·         ·        Our JIT disaster lectures are made available within minutes of a disaster to attack the epidemiology of fear

·         Methods: The Mobile-Global Supercourse will bring Mobile Technology into Global health by:

·         ·        Develop a Supercourse App, which can bring the lectures into Mobile

·         ·        Link I-Phones with pico projector for use in rural areas for teaching using Powerpoint lectures.

·          Using Mobiles for risk factor reduction, e.g. obesity, smoking, etc.

·         ·        Establishment of a system of Expert knowledge reachback where those involved in Glocal health (global to local) can find answer in minutes by leaders in the area

·         ·        Interdisciplinary Global Health Efforts, e.g. Global telehouse inspection, e.g. working with the International Association of Certified House Inspectors to develop a system using cell camera system for determining habitability half a world away

·         ·        Develop a Mobile-Global Surveillance technology, for disease as well as environmental concerns such as Radiation, chemical exposure, etc.

·         ·        Link Supercourse experts with the Media so that good scientific information is shared.

·         ·        Lectures around the world: Create a lecture on global health that is designed to teach millions world wide

·         ·        Global  Health and environmental surveys