How SMS Could Save Your Life

SMS Technology might be used to manage the treatment of diseases in third world countries where health staff are inadequate. Wired News reports an interesting project using SMS Technology in GUGULETHU, South Africa.

Wired News reports

The system used by Sizophila combines a comprehensive database that includes a patient's treatment history and lab results with a messaging service that enables counselors, clinic staff and doctors to communicate using SMS. Visiting clients' homes, therapeutic counselors scroll through a series of menus to report on side effects, monitor adherence and provide detailed social information. Once every four months, they show up without an appointment to count the client's pills.

They use SMS to send all of this information to a central database, where Sister Mtwisha can instantly view it on her computer screen. With all of the relevant information compiled neatly in front of her, the irregularities stand out.

Checking the results of a counselor's pill count against the data from the pharmacy, she can tell if a client isn't sticking to the treatment. Or if a patient on treatment is not showing an improved CD-4 count and viral load, she can ask the counselor to take him to the clinic.

"It's really a lifeline," says Thobela, who like many of the Sizophila counselors is herself taking ARVs.

Indeed, Cell-Life managing director Dr. Ulrike Rivett holds the technology up as a potential solution for managing the logistics of ARV treatment throughout South Africa and beyond. The technology is being tested at Sizophila and at another clinic in Durban.

When the boat Rebecca Fyfe was on off the coast of Bali had engine problems she and the other passengers were stranded without any GPS or emergency radio on board.

She set off an international search-and-rescue mission with a text message to her boyfriend back in England.

He called the Thames Coastguard, who called the Falmouth office. They called their counterparts in Australia, who contacted the Indonesian authorities via the embassy in Canberra.

Eventually an Indonesian Navy gunboat was dispatched from Lombok to look for the stricken tourists.