Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage about contactless mobile payments in the U.S., a report on trends in technology and health, research that covers how mobiles can help economic development in Africa and the challenges that are hindering that development, a data gathering platform from Nokia that is now open-source, and the announcement of the mHealth Summit's keynote speaker.
- AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are teaming up to pilot a multi-carrier contactless payment system over mobile phones. The pilot, which is planned to run in four U.S. cities, will test if a smartphone swipe can replace credit and debit cards as a means of payment. (via engadget)
- PSFK's "Future of Health Report" looks at how technology (and especially mobile technology) can be used for managing healthcare, with a focus on 15 trends that will effect the future of mHealth.
- Jenny Aker and Isaac Mbiti published a white paper that examines the use of mobile phones in Africa in their paper "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa." The paper looks at ways in which phones can be used for development (such as farmers researching market prices, laborers finding jobs, or health clinics collecting and sharing data), and the challenges (such as a lack of infrastructure and high costs of ownership/use) to accessing these benefits.
- Nokia's Nokia Data Gathering, which lets users create mobile-enabled surveys (that can be downloaded, filled out, and then sent back to the original source all over a mobile phone) and then analyze that data through server-side software, has gone open-source.
- Bill Gates will be the keynote speaker at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health's mHealth Summit in May 2011. Gates, founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will speak about the potential of mHealth in developing countries.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei
Post new comment