Mobile Health Applications for Developing Economies

Today, it was announced that Dimagi was focusing its efforts on providing health-related information services available to health workers in Tanzania.

The full report is on the Industry Standard site here .

While this is a fantastic next step, our friends over at Mobile Healthcare have already taken this idea one step farther and placing patient care in the hands of actual patients as well.

Putting these two ideas together could possible lead to unprecedented advances in health care solutions for both developed and developing economies. Providing health care workers with remote applications and tools, and patients with self-diagnostic capabilities could take the mobile platform to an entirely new level of usefulness.

I remember reading that a Japanese company had applied for patents related to patient self-diagnostic tools (for monitoring temperature, heartbeats, etc..). If anyone can find this company for me, it might help solidify this idea..

It's clear though that 2009 will be a very exciting year for mobile/wireless solutions!

The Future is Definitely Mobile

The Pew Internet "Future of the Internet" report was just released, and the results are clear - The future is MOBILE. This Report is a MUST read for anyone interested in the future trajectory of the Mobile platform, and it highlights a number of important facts. Probably one of the most important take-aways from this report is the fact that even the "experts" in this field are not certain the the evolution towards a more mobile future will better empower individual consumers.

Issues such as the further blending of personal vs. work time and physical vs. virtual reality are something that the Mobile Consumer Lab will continue to focus upon over the coming years.

Although this report is fairly long (100+ pages), it's completely free and well worth the time spent reading it.

The Future of Mobile Interfaces

I've been talking a great deal about the future of mobile and wireless devices these last few weeks in classes here at IUJ and at presentations in and around Tokyo. The heart of these discussions has been the concept of a Simple Front End merged with a Complex backend - or Simplexity, a term my friends Marco and Ludovico have also been endorsing. And in perfect alignment with these conversations, Priya Ganapati from Wired just blogged about this exact same concept today.

The idea of more elegant and user-friendly interfaces are vital to the future success and development of mobile content and services. And while these ideas may not ultimately work, the concept that is driving them, Simplexity, is sure to be a major force going forward.

IBM Concludes that the Future of the Internet is MOBILE

IBM has just released the results of its new study which explored the growing importance of the mobile phone as the "platform of choice" for accessing the Internet. They received responses from 600 respondents in the U.S., the U.K. and China and lead researcher Dr. Sungyoul Lee concluded that: "With 70 percent of consumers worldwide who believe that the mobile Internet has the potential to add significant to moderate value to their day-to-day lives, the time is now for companies to develop intuitive applications and services that allow people of all ages to effortlessly access and use the Internet while on the go -- anytime, and anywhere."

But company executives must not take this as an open mandate to simply port their existing Internet content to the mobile platform. That would be an enormous and costly mistake.

Instead, business leaders must look at the Mobile platform as an entirely new channel, with distinct differences from the fixed PC (or even portable, laptop PC with a wireless connection). Consumer behavior on the mobile platform mandates a different approach that leverages the power of the mobile platform.

For example, Amazon.co.jp here in Japan did not replicate it's PC site experience on the mobile platform, but instead significantly modified it to match with the mobile consumer experience. One of the most important innovations (one that I believe suggests a complete paradigm shift in marketing competition) is their development of Scan Search. Through the use of a simple bar-code reader, they have turned the mobile phone into a huge competitive advantage. With a consumer shopping in a competitors store, using Scan Search, that consumer can get an immediate price comparison, read peer reviews, and explore recommendations for similar books all at Amazon.

While such a model may not be possible to replicate in other sectors or industries, this is a clear lesson than the mobile phone and its enormous set of capabilities has the opportunity to truly re-shape how we develop and implement our "eMarketing" initiatives.

This IBM study offers a very important glimpse of what will come, and look forward to continuing our own studies in this area.

The meek shall inherit the Web

The Economist just recently published an article on the growing power of the mobile platform to bring the Internet to developing economies. While Nick Negroponte and his colleagues at OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) captured the world's attention with the concept of the $100 PC, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the PC is a far inferior platform to the mobile phone for bringing the Internet to the world's least developed nations. Instead of thinking about the $100 PC, let's start thinking about the $1 handset which is capable of accessing the Internet.

But the PC Internet is not built to be viewed via the mobile phone. And while mobile browser companies such as Access , Opera and others do amazing things in bridging the gap between these two platforms, the onus is clearly on site owners and content developers to re-think their approach to content and service delivery, creating sites specifically designed for the mobile phone and not the PC.

Such developments are already underway. And what is most exciting about all of this, is that the future of the mobile industry is clearly aligned with developing economies. And as we continue to study the impact of mobile services and solutions on consumer behavior here at the Mobile Consumer Lab, we are regularly applying these lessons to student business ideas in developing economies within this region and around the world.

If you'd like to get involved in our efforts this year, please feel free to let me know!

Two NEW Thesis Reports Uploaded

Today, we have just uploaded two new final MBA thesis reports to the MoCoBe website. The first is written by Kenny Yand and Rich White, who studied the Japanese Mobile Gaming market for nearly two years while at IUJ. Their thesis looks into the key drivers of gaming in general including console gaming, portable gaming and mobile gaming. Based on this analysis they then create a roadmap for the future evolution of mGaming in Japan (and globally) based on these factors.

The second thesis was written by Kazunori Otsu, who looked at the diffusion of mobile full browsers in the Japanese mobile market. Specifically, he applied Diffusion of Innovation Theory to understand why mobile full browsers have not reached wide levels of usage and adoption. He conducted both in-person and online surveys in order to gather data for his analysis.

We will be adding more thesis papers when they are finalized. Stay tuned for our reports on mBanking, mPayments and more!

Mobile Phones and Kids

Brandon Baker has just completed his graduation thesis about the role and potential effects that the mobile phone use in "hero" shows in Japan has on children.

While each of the major operators here have rolled out phones, and service plans geared specifically towards children, this paper suggests that children actually should not be given a fully-equipped mobile phone until they are at least 16 years old. Additionally, this paper concludes that mobile businesses must take a more vigilant role in their efforts to profit from the "youth" market, as the negative consequences that mobile phone usage has upon children seems to far outweigh the benefits.

If this latest news from Spain (thanks to Brandon for the update on this!) isn't enough to convince you of the seriousness of this issue, please read through Brandon's entire thesis for a long list of other instances in which mobile phones have led to serious threats to children.

If you agree with the conclusions of this paper then, I believe that it's time for everyone within the wireless ecosystem to begin to carefully reconsider how we are approaching the issue of children and mobile phones.

The Mobile Consumer Lab will be taking this on as one of our initiatives in the Fall 2008 semester, and are hoping that these efforts will lead to more effective rules and guidelines for how all of us approach the issue of children's usage of mobile phones.