Tuesday, July 15, 2014

What are Cubans doing with their smart phones?

Necessity is the mother of invention., proverb, unknown
Small Is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher, 1973.

When personal computers became availaible, people began developing low-cost medical diagnosis equipment like this PC-based endoscope, which replaced a $30,000 instrument with a PC interfaced to an $800 scope:


Today, smart phones are being used as computers in diagnostic equipment and the savings are even more dramatic, as in this retinal scanner, costing $500, phone included:


What's happening in Cuba?

Cuba is known for the quality and quantity of their doctors, health care system and medical research. Cuba also has many computer scientists and resourceful developers. While Cuba has second-generation cell phone infrastructure, Cubans still have third and fourth-generation smart phones, which they use as cameras and handheld computers.

All that is good news. The bad news is that Cuba does not have a lot of capital for building clinics and purchasing diagnostic equipment.

Cuba sounds like a perfect environment for innovation in medical applications of smart phones. Are Cubans developing and using smartphone-based tools for medical diagnosis and community health? If you know of such examples, please let me know.

More generally, what sorts phone-based applications are Cubans using and developing? No doubt they are taking selfie-photos, listening to music and playing games, but what else are they doing with those pocket-sized computers?

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