In The World: Health care in the palm of a hand
According to the United Nations Foundation, there are about 5 billion mobile-device subscribers worldwide. Two-thirds of those are in low- and middle-income countries, many of whose citizens lack easy access to health care and must travel great distances — often hundreds of miles — to the nearest medical clinic. Now, a team of student and faculty volunteers based at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) under the guidance of Peter Szolovits, professor of computer science and engineering and of health science and technology, has developed a way to use mobile-device technology to improve health-care access in developing countries. Known as Sana, which means “healthy” in Spanish and Italian, the open-source software system relies on smart phones running Google’s Android operating system to connect health-care workers in rural regions with physicians in urban areas. Using the Sana application on their phones, the workers collect patient data, including pictures and...