mobilisms.com

Lately, I’ve become very interested in the push to put mobile devices in the hands of the developing world. Not because I think some kid in a remote village of a third-world country needs to play with Twitter’s new “Places” feature (although they just may want to); it’s because of the promise that lies in what the spread of information and technology could do for bridging the quality-of-life gap.

In the next two weeks, a group from UC Davis will compete for the Imagine Cup, a global contest by Microsoft that awards students who create innovative technologies that can help the world. The team’s invention is a software for cell phones that identifies vascular diseases in children by taking a picture of their eye and sending the information to a server for diagnostic testing. The results are then texted back to the phone.

Similar to this, a new device created by MIT’s Media Lab will allow for a simple, on-the-spot, eye exam for refractive errors in vision by way of a cell phone’s camera.

I think this is where mobile needs to develop. Both these technologies create opportunities for low-cost health care to go out into rural locations where other modern medical options aren’t available.

While it’s fun to push the limits with our social networks and digital media, imagine the possibilities from moving mobile into a more practical space where it can address the world’s largest problems – one application at a time.