PBS’s “Rundown” blog features two stories as part of the “Cheers Report,” a “series of reports on the impact of mobile technology and health in 10 African countries.” In the first story, Imani Cheers, the director of educational resources and a multimedia producer for the PBS NewsHour, describes how mobile…

“Last week [the World Bank] announced three prize-winners of the Sanitation Hackathon and App Challenge, described as a yearlong project to recognize innovative and locally relevant [smartphone applications (apps)] that address sanitation challenges,” Inter Press Service reports. The news service highlights the three winners — “Manobi, a mobile and internet…

“In just six years, DKT Ethiopia has transformed its system for tracking contraceptive sales from pins and pencils to computers and satellites and, in the process, helped create a family planning and HIV prevention success story in the Horn of Africa,” David Olson, a global development communications consultant, writes in…

Writing in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog, Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, discusses how social media is advancing the conversation surrounding global newborn health. “During the Global Newborn Health conference that was held [last] week in Johannesburg, South Africa,” social media “transcended continents,…

The Washington Post examines how new mobile applications are transforming remote parts of Africa. “Across sub-Saharan Africa, technology, particularly mobile technology, has transformed the lives of digital-savvy entrepreneurs,” the newspaper writes, adding, “While many are forging successful high-tech businesses in urban centers, others are finding ways to help people ……

“mHealth can be defined as medical and public health practices supported by mobile technologies, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices,” Patricia Mechael, executive director of the mHealth Alliance, and Sarah Struble, a program associate at the mHealth Alliance, write in…

“Since a lot of health revolves around information, public health experts had high expectations for the mobile phone,” author and columnist Tina Rosenberg writes in the New York Times’ “Opinionator” blog, adding, “But roughly a decade after the start of mHealth, as the mobile health field has come to be…

IRIN examines the feasibility of using a smartphone equipped with a glass lens to detect the presence of parasitic worms in stool samples, a concept that “could have a significant impact on the diagnosis of intestinal parasites that affect millions in remote, rural parts of the world, where even the most…

“Mobile phones, along with local knowledge and field support, can help to ensure the effective diagnosis and treatment of malaria in remote rural areas, according to a study” conducted in Bangladesh and published this month in Malaria Journal, SciDev.Net reports. Examining “almost 1,000 phone calls to report suspected cases of malaria that were…

“Mobile phone technology is frequently heralded as a solution to many health challenges facing the developing world, but two systematic reviews have found that evidence to back such claims is still largely non-existent,” SciDev.Net reports. The reviews, led by Caroline Free of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published…