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Mobile Games for Healthcare
Presenter: Dr. Hilmi Quraishi, Chief Learning Technologist, ZMQ Software Systems

Freedom HIV/AIDS is first ever initiatives on HIV/AIDS awareness using mobile phone games, and it is also the largest ever-social initiative on the mobile devices.). The initiative has effectively been able to reach out to over 27 millions people in providing HIV/AIDS awareness and health communication through mobile phones. Mobile devices are the most prevalent tools in the hands of a common man all specially in the developing world. The number of mobile phone users in India reached 347 million at the end of 2008 (according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). In addition, more people in India have access to mobile phones than landline telephones or PCs, which makes mobile phones an extremely powerful medium for communication in India. Mobile is the device of the future, whether it is communication, education, health care, e-governance or information. In India, 24% of mobile users live in small towns and villages. Seeing the success of the launch of first four games in India, Freedom HIV/AIDS worked towards scaling the program, with rolling out of new games for regional consumption. Later, the initiative launched a new program for East Africa, called the Africa Reach Program. The program was innovative in more than one way. It used knowledge base of local African NGOs for designing new games in local languages like Swahili and Malawian. It was a perfect example of South-South cooperation where many partners worked to make the program sustainable and successful. The whole program was built on a new business model to sustain a long-term support for the program and its new initiatives.

Contact: zmq@vsnl.com

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Mon, September 28, 2009:
Something innovative and good idea to use mobile technolgy in poor countries