Healthphone: the uses of mobile phones in delivering healthcare

Software	None
Covers	App design, medical information systems, sociology, possibly AI
Skills Required	Interest in future of personal computing, interest in health issues
Challenge	Conceptual ???? Technical ? Programming

Brief Description

Hundreds of millions of people, throughout the world, carry - or will soon carry - powerful mobile phones capable of running sophisticated apps. How might all these smartphones serve as a resource for improving the health of all these people, many of whom live or are travelling in poor or remote places without easy access to doctors or hospitals, or have chronic conditions that need managing, or who have conditions they should be better informed about?

Your challenge is to investigate what is being done and what might be done to bring effective healthcare to people via their smartphones. This might involve looking at what kinds of needs potential users might have that can be addressed via apps and websites, what people's interest and desires are or might be for medical apps or online services, and what cultural or organizational or ethical or legal or economic barriers or opportunities there are to developing and deploying useful smartphone-based medical resources.

Variants

This project might gain from being tightly focused on a subset of the wide range of issues it could encompass:

Specific geographic area, for instance needs and opportunities in a relatively poor African country, or places where there are cultural obstacles to, say, women getting particular kinds of medical advice.
Specific type of disease or problem with particular characteristics
Specific type of support need, such as diagnosis or managing chronic conditions needing regular medication or exercises

If you'd prefer a development project, you could design and prototype an app for delivering some specific kind of healthcare service or resource.

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