During the Health 2.0 conference on Monday, Massachusetts-based Physicians Interactive Holdings and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights announced the launch of Health eVillages, a program aimed at bringing mobile health tools to underserved areas of the world, MobiHealthNews reports (Versel, MobiHealthNews, 9/27).
Under the program, health care professionals working in underserved regions will receive handheld devices and mobile phones that are preloaded with:
- Drug guides;
- Medical alerts;
- Reference tools; and
- Summaries of medical journal articles (Gershon, Worcester Business Journal, 9/26).
Donato Tramuto -- founding partner, CEO and vice chair of Physicians Interactive Holdings -- said the program will provide new and refurbished mobile devices that do not require Internet access, allowing caregivers to access the reference tools from remote locations.
Health eVillages already has completed pilots of the program in Haiti, Kenya, Uganda and portions of the Gulf Coast that were affected by Hurricane Katrina (Wicklund, Healthcare IT News, 9/27).