It’s not your average medical tool, Smartphones are better suited to businessmen and women in a busy office or the young fashion followers on their latest shopping spree. It’s unlikely that you’d see a doctor reaching for his phone during patient diagnosis, but that could be about to change.

Software advancements have made it possible for the smartphone to find a place in medicine. Health workers in the remote Philippines province of Batanes have been trying out devices to make simple hospital procedures a lot more efficient, in particular helping to reduce the time it takes to get an x-ray to a radiologist and get a diagnosis.

The software’s created by a non-profit organisation Moca, who saw vital flaws in medical care in developing countries. Apart from the lack of expert decision support, the medical centres were crying out for a platform to share information. Moca realised that mobile phones could bridge the gap between health workers in rural areas and doctors residing in cities.

The average mobile phone comes with an increasing number of features, which could all be used for medical data collection. Cameras can send, record and help analyse changes in skin lesions, wounds etc., the voice recording feature provides a quick and simple way to record, and listen back to note dictations and of course Wi-Fi/GPRS connections provide constant access and communication with databases.

The Moca team have done a pretty good job in setting up the rural to urban mobile communication. Key design features include, built-in training and workflow solutions on the handset so mobiles can be used to train local nurses and health workers. The software is downloadable to the phone so training and decision support is always available, even in the most remote areas, where connection is poor or non-existent.

A crucial element to the medical platform was the user interface. When designing the system Moca made sure that it was simple to understand and navigate. Health workers can run a procedure and collect patient data, via text, image or sound, it is then uploaded to the Moca database where city docs can review the case and send over their diagnosis.

So far, the system has proved very successful and now plans are in place to develop a video function so health workers can send real-time footage to hospitals. Moca believe this would greatly reduce infection rates in remote areas. For example, after surgery, patients are required to see the surgeon for routine check-ups after surgery to make sure the wound is healing without infection. Patients in remote areas often skip these follow up sessions because of the hassle getting to the hospital. With the Moca system patients could go to their nearest health clinic and have a video of the wound sent directly to the surgeon. If there was a chance of infection, antibiotics could then be prescribed direct from the clinic.

Medical mobile advancements could prove to be a vital instrument in improving healthcare in developing countries. Initial reports, such as the work done by Moca are showing very high success rates; with more time and investment we could eventually see mobile medical systems going global.