Tech designed for Africa helps US fight disease, save money

"It was in 2008, sitting under a shade tree in an East African village, that Bollinger sketched out on a piece of paper how the mobile phones that even the poorest Ugandan in the remotest village seemed to have could be harnessed to improve health. Bollinger wanted an app that would allow information to be sent by the touch of a button on a phone, and trigger 'a series of strategic public health and clinical reactions throughout the health system,' he said. The platform had to be secure enough to meet strict U.S. patient privacy rules, and the whole process—from the message being sent to the health authorities’ response being activated—should happen within 10 minutes. It was a fairly tall order, but within months, clinicians in rural Uganda were using emocha on their cellphones to securely exchange  data with health officials in distant cities."