"India a prime market for mobile health services"

Our mobile devices are rapidly becoming a integral part of our daily lives. Their application has seeped into areas of information, education and entertainment and are now gradually expanding to other areas. One of the key areas where the mobile technology can play a significant role is the health care and public health field. This specially hold true for countries like India where a large population continues to live in rural areas devoid of access to hospital, clinics and other heath related facilities.

At the Mobile Asia Conference in Hong Kong, Chuck Parker, Executive Director, Continua Health Alliance said "China and India represent a great opportunity to take on a new healthcare living style with mobile health providing a great alternative to building large healthcare systems.”

He was further quoted by Mobilebusinessbriefing as saying that "access issue provides a great driving point to provide personal care".  As the public health spending has been projected to increase by an average of 3 percentage points of GDP over the next 20 years,  according to Parker the "countries will need to contain the growth of age-related public spending on health". In this scenario mobile health services will play out to be more cost effective and net a larger population.

According to Reuters, Jeanine Vos, head of the mobile health unit at Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), said that as "healthcare" technologies are coming to Asia a large number of  companies stand to benefit. This would include mobile operators, device manufacturers, software developers and healthcare providers.

In India Apollo Hospitals and few manufacturers and operators are also providing health based services. Early this year, Spice launched its Jeeyo Healthy mobile health based services offering health related information and health related advise from medical experts 24X7 at a nominal fee.