The mHealth Alliance, supported with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, recently announced the winners of the Top 11 in 2011 Innovators Challenge. This challenge was held for the first time and recognizes pioneering mobile health (mHealth) professionals. The awards were given to those individuals who have leveraged mobile technology in creative ways to improve health systems and outcomes in some of most remote areas of the world.
Selected through a process that included public nominations and voting on the mHealth Alliance’s HealthUnbound.org, the Top 11 in 2011 Innovators were announced at a reception held in advance of the mHealth Summit being held this week in the Washington, DC area.
In a release, Patty Mechael, executive director of the mHealth Alliance said that, “The growing field of mHealth is driven by innovation. From fighting counterfeit medications to enabling doctors to communicate for free, the contributions of these top innovators are advancing the field, expanding delivery of important health services, and saving lives.”
The challenge received nominations from more than 30 countries around the world, further proof of mobile technology’s ability to deliver health information and services on a global scale. Karl Brown, Associate Director of applied technology at the Rockefeller Foundation said that “As the mHealth community gathers for the annual mHealth Summit, we are excited to recognize these innovators, many of whom are working in low resource environments on behalf of poor and vulnerable populations. We hope that the contributions of the Top 11 in 2011 will inspire many others to continue advancing the capabilities of mobile technologies to deliver positive health outcomes.”
The winners of the Top 11 in 2011 Innovators Challenge are as follows: Alain Labrique for mCare which is an integrated mobile system that facilitates pregnancy surveillance and registration to optimize care delivery to pregnant women and newborns, and facilitates emergency response. Ann Roos-Weil for Pesinet for a system that combined local resources and mobile technology to increase care and reduce child mortality in Mali; Ashok Jhunjhunwala for Voice Net which is a personalized voice-based information retrieval and transaction system with local language voice recognition to effectively aid healthcare delivery in India; Aydogan Ozcan for cost-effective and field-portable microscope and diagnostics tools for telemedicine application in resource-poor areas and developing countries in Africa, South America, and South Asia; Bright Simmons for mPedigree for a platform to combine mobile technology and cloud computing to fight counterfeit medicines by providing free access to an instant drug quality verification system via text messaging in Africa and South Asia.
Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
