Mobile phones are broadly available and their use has become widespread, particularly in low and middle-income countries where the penetration rate surpasses 100%. My presentation will focus on four examples of using mobile phones to enhance the information available and the quality of preventive health interventions. First, we have used mobile phones to improve the training, accuracy of any information diffused, monitoring, and support of community health workers (CHW) in urban and rural townships in South Africa. Second, we have used mobile phones to evaluate the efficacy of preventive interventions in South Africa. Third, we have used mobile phones to create social support networks for women living with diabetes in South Africa. Fourth, persons living with HIV in Los Angeles have had their adherence to medical regimes and reductions in transmission acts monitored and increased over time via the use of mobile phones. The importance of the mobile platform for transforming the health of communities is immense and, as yet, underutilized. For this reason and several others, the applications developed for the mobile health platform remain an open-source resource with standardized interfaces to maximize the utility of the platform for rapid, global diffusion of improved preventive health care.
