Hello all, At the ICT4D conference in Bangalore in 2007 Anirudh Krishna spoke about falling into and out of poverty in the developing world. As I recall he said that one of the ways that people become impoverished is because of health related issues. He described a type of scenario where a person (or a family) works hard and starts to develop a small cushion of resources. The, perhaps a family member becomes sick and needs special attention. This cuts into the cushion of resources that the family has and perhaps they revert to poverty. This is obviously a superficial version of a very complex situation.
Krishna, Anirudh. 2003. "Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?" World Development Volume 32, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 121-136. Given that background, I was interested to see the following story on use of the mobile phone as a type of mobile medical laboratory that could benefit rural persons in need of health care. INVENTION TURNS CELL PHONE INTO MOBILE MEDICAL LAB According to CNN, a device may be available in the near future that could turn a cell phone into a mobile medical lab -- and change the way doctors treat patients in rural areas far from hospitals. Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA has taken a typical Sony Ericsson phone, and by adding a few off-the-shelf parts that cost less than $50, he can get it to produce a remarkable image that shows the thousands of cells in a small fluid sample such as human blood. "It is a new way of doing images of cells and bacteria," said Ozcan, an assistant professor in UCLA's electrical engineering department. While other small imaging systems use bulky optics, his group's invention offers "true miniaturization of a laboratory" because there are no lenses and the results are quick and accurate, he said. http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2009/02/022607.htm http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/03/medical.imaging.device/ A summary of the talk by Anirudh Krishna and the conference can be found at: http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/blog/2007/12/17/ictd2007-notes-from-bangalore and http://ictdchick.com/blog/2007/12/17/ictd2007-notes-from-bangalore/ Rich L. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mobile-society" group. To post to this group, send email to mobile-society@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mobile-society+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-society?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
