SMS for Life and mPedigree Acknowledged as Most Innovative Technologies Innovation Award from Wall Street Journal
Saving Lives with SMS for Life
Photo by ibmphoto24, via Flickr.
The Wall Street Journal’s Innovation Award judges recognized two health care IT projects that use cell phone technology to provide access to medication to patients in Africa.
Judges chose the SMS for Life Project as the most innovative technology in Health-Care IT and mPedigree Network as the runner-up.
SMS for Life uses cellphone text messaging to track medicines so that needy patients and the stock of necessary life saving medicines can be connected quickly.
The project is run by Jim Barrington, former chief information officer of Novartis, partnering with Novartis, Google, Vodafone Group, IBM, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and the Tanzanian government. Initially they addressed supply issues with anti-malarial medications that were poorly distributed.
Rural clinics can send text messages listing the medicines in stock, so that health officials anc central distribution sites can quickly identify them and re-stock the medications.
mPedigree Network, Ghana, was identified as the Runner-up in the Most Innovative Technology in Health Care IT.
mPedigree uses a free for consumers text-messaging service that allows them to verify the authenticity of medication at purchase by typing a code into the phone and receiving a verifying text in response. This allows consumers to avoid counterfeit medications at purchase.