Mobile technology benefits healthcare in South Africa
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The fourth industrial revolution has been testing African countries on whether they can surpass their more developed trading partners. A lot of exciting and cutting-edge work is going on in many African countries, covering a broad spectrum of human endeavor through the use of mobile technology.
Debbie Rogers, Doctor of Medicine at the Praekelt Foundation, asserts that humans have been using mobile technology for a very long time, able to do ingenious things with some of the most basic technology. "It's not about how impressive the technology is, whether it's AI (artificial intelligence), and natural language processing," says Rogers.
Rogers also believes one area that has benefited from mobile technology is information sharing on healthcare, considered as a critical component in Africa. "A lot of the work we've done is around maternal health and providing mothers with information they've never had access to."
According to Arthur Goldstuck, Doctor of Medicine at World Wide Worx, in terms of telephony, most countries in Africa have already surpassed developed countries and that mobile technology has "already leapfrogged landline technology" Goldstuck believes that 4G and related technologies are going to allow people to get high speed access to the internet, without waiting for internet technologies, such as fiber or ADSLs, to become available in those countries. "So on an infrastructure level and a broadband access level, we have seen the leapfrog already," says Goldstuck.
Mobile technology is set to surpass many African countries ahead of their trading partners. What is important now depends on the recipients, and whether information and those applications are accessible to them.