Mobile Phones as Doctors

The biggest news to come out of the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain last week was the news about the use of mobile phones in the medical realm. According to the New York Times, British mobile phone operator Vodaphone along with the United Nations and the mHealth Alliance are backing the efforts to increase usage of mobile phones for patient-doctor communication. Terry Kramer, strategy director at Vodaphone pushed the concept by stating that "There are 2.2 billion mobile phones in the developing world, 305 million computers but only 11 million hospital beds," in address to the Congress. Kramer believes that mobile phones can be used to remind patients to get vaccinations, set-up appointments, relay information about outbreaks, or provide facts about a patient’s condition.

This type of cell phone education is already at work in Uganda where, according to the Tehran Times, the mobile provider Celtel sent text messages to 15,000 subscribers on their network asking a question about HIV/AIDS. Users who responded with an incorrect answer were sent a text with the correct answer. Finally, all participants were sent a text with information on how to get counseling and testing a local health clinic. After the survey, the number of people who sought counseling climbed from 1000 to over 1400 in less than 6 weeks.

Since 1998 in Mexico, mobile users have been able to call or text a hotline with a doctor answering the other end. This service only provides advice to its users.

My Thoughts

I think that this is a good, effective use of mobile phones but I also think that there is a lot of potential for mistakes. Texting a doctor is no substitute for an actual appointment where the patient gets to verbally voice their concerns and the doctor has the ability to perform a physical exam. I have been a certified EMT in Massachusetts for over 2 years and I have learned that visual cues to a patient’s condition are often more telling than the symptoms they are describing to you. As a provider, I think it would be very frustrating and almost a shot-in-the-dark to give medical advice through a text message.