Mobile Health

Cell phones 4 p8tients n MDz

Alexis Karlin, Staff Writer

Throughout the world, engineers and innovators have been asking themselves this question: what if cell phones played a key role in health care? What if all one needed to update and check one’s medical records and to communicate with one’s physician was a Blackberry, cellular phone, or Palm Pilot? From these questions grew the technological movement that is developing rapidly in the United States and elsewhere, promising great benefits for the health care system.

Experts say that this innovation, known as “Mobile Health,” could potentially save the American health system hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars, if implemented within the coming years. Already utilized in Europe, Mobile Health has been steadily gaining momentum in the American system. Its imminent application into the medical world promises to bring financial benefits and improve the facility and efficiency of patient-physician relations. As the population grows and ages, doctors are in increasingly higher demand, but they have a limited amount of time with each patient. Developers of Mobile Health technology hope that their products will remedy this issue.

Community Health Workers

The key to effective care in rural Rwanda

Alison Kraemer, Staff Writer

The primarily rural population of Rwanda faces seemingly overwhelming barriers to obtaining quality healthcare where there is only one doctor for every 20,000 people.  The government of one of the world’s poorest nations has sought for over a decade to revitalize the shattered post-genocide health system.  To strengthen public healthcare for the impoverished and underserved people of Rwanda, the non-governmental organization Partners In Health (PIH) partnered with the Clinton Foundation and the Rwandan Ministry of Health (MOH) in April 2005 to bring its model of comprehensive community-based care, developed over several decades in rural Haiti, to Rwanda.¹ In fact, PIH boldly instituted resources often overlooked in global health delivery – Community Health Workers, or CHWs.  As members of their local villages, the CHWs are employed, trained, and compensated by PIH and the Rwandan MOH to invest in personal home-based care.

Operation ASHA

Fighting Tuberculosis in India

Becky Martinez, Staff Writer

After day upon day of sifting through trash searching for small treasures that can be recycled for cash, 19-year-old Akhil begins having a simple cough.  Soon this cough has spiraled out of control and is defined by the blood-tinged sputum.  Akhil has tuberculosis. Soon he spreads the infection his four family members who all reside with him in a 64 foot-squared hut.

Colonial Roots of Global Health

Lessons learned for modern humanitarian health

Paul Farmer, Peter Drobac, and Zoe Agoos

A piece in the Washington Post last September observed that “For a Global Generation, Public Health Is a Hot Field.”[i] The generation in question was, of course, that of the primary readership of this journal. In the words of one American pollster, yours is the generation appositely termed the “First Global.” But even if this trend is new—and it seems to us that its scope is unprecedented—the collection of problems classed under the rubric of global health is not new, although there are many new twists (such as acquired resistance to antimicrobials, which could not have occurred prior to their invention and widespread use). The basic lineaments of the debates are not new, either, nor are efforts to affect the health of populations far from home. The issues facing those interested in global health are old ones; many of the institutions confronting these challenges are mature bureaucracies. Even the identification of ranking challenges—what historians of science have called “problem choice”—is constrained by social forces with roots in the 19^th century and before.

BroadReach Healthcare

Merging the worlds of business and healthcare

Sarah Littlehale, Staff Writer

“He who has health, has hope. And he who has hope, has everything,” or so goes the Arab proverb. Unfortunately, far too few people in this world have such hope.  In the eyes of many, healthcare has become a luxury for the rich yet remains fragmented and uncoordinated in the world’s most impoverished regions.  The founders of BroadReach Healthcare chose to imagine the world differently.

BroadReach is an international consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. and South Africa specializing in global healthcare management.