It is designed for regions where trained medical professionals are sparse and where communications are limited due to the damage caused by a natural disaster. Telephone cables can be blown down, rendering phone networks useless. The system has been used with success in Haiti, where the massive earthquake of 2010 has left its mark.
Health units in many Haitian regions are few and far between and if someone decides to make the journey to a unit, there is a very good chance no one will be there to provide care. This system makes up for the lack of local health care by ensuring anyone from anywhere can be trained to report the symptoms of a patient accurately.
It uses a special interface designed for satellite and smartphones that walks a user through a series of steps to send data as SMS messages via satellite or a ground-based system, if available. This information is then accessed by local and national health systems via an Internet portal....
Aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, shot by UN Photo/Logan Abassi United Nations Development Programme, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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