Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Village women in parts of Andhra Pardesh, India are using a local radio station to educate their communities of best practices in health and farming. Photo: Kris Van de Vijver (flickr)

One of the most basic forms of technology — the radio — is helping women in rural parts of India's Andhra Pradesh educate other women in their communities.

Deccan Development Society (DDS), a grassroots non-profit based in Andhra Pardesh, works with some of the poorest communities with programs focused on health, education, food security and other methods of empowerment for women. Last October, DDS developed a community radio station that broadcasts daily interviews with local village women throughout the state.

Most of the women interviewed are poor, uneducated and illiterate. Many of them work in the fields or are involved in some form of manual labor in their villages. Despite their limitations, these women are able to use the radio to discuss their work and community issues that may help their peers. For example, discussions on which herbal medicines to use for livestock and efficient farming tools are helpful for other women in the village and surrounding areas. The women are paid for their contribution which allows them to feel a sense of empowerment by earning their own money.

BBC News documents the initiative by DDS and spoke to one of its founders, P.V. Satheesh who explained the benefits of the initiative.

The local radio station has helped women in the region become more confident…the idea was to get local voices to talk to the local people on issues that were close to their hearts. It is a means of asserting themselves in this rural setting, of finding a voice and putting themselves in greater control of their own destiny.

The Chinese government wants to boost rural consumerism by offering rebates on home appliances. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

As China rings in the Year of the Ox, its government is encouraging rural residents to splurge — on TVs, washing machines, refrigerators and personal computers — through a new subsidy program aimed to boost domestic demand.

Using funds generally reserved for an ailing export market, the program guarantees Chinese buyers a 13 percent rebate on the purchase of home appliances. The discounts are available to the nearly 800 million people living in rural China, a relatively untapped market in a country that is the leading producer and exporter of household appliances, according to the China Daily.

Some rural Chinese are taking advantage of the bargains. Mongolian herdsman Chaolu showed off his new 26-inch LCD television to a China Daily reporter. "With the money saved, I could buy more than 10kg of mutton. It looks as if the government has sent me a special gift for the Spring Festival."

But the long-term lure of the subsidies is questionable. A two-year pilot program in the rural Sichuan province originally helped boost appliance sales, but now farmers have little cash to pay for these luxury items, Mary Kay Magistad reports on PRI's The World.

Magistad says much of rural families' cash flow comes from migrant workers who've lost their jobs in a slow economy. And in rural communities where few people have access to good health care, retirement pensions and education, household appliances don't necessarily top the list of priorities.

High electricity costs are also a drawback when it comes to running appliances. "The cost is nothing to urban residents," farmer Yan Youqi told China Daily. "But we farmers have to think whether it is necessary to store so little food in refrigerators at such a cost."

Beijing economist Jua Du-Ming told The World that his country's government has good intentions, but needs to refocus its stimulus plan on meeting rural people's basic needs.

"The current economic crisis has really changed a lot of things. I can see that the Central government is … they are indeed trying to solve our problems, but all the conflict of interest is there. But when the general macroeconomic has changed in such a way … they have to do something."