In an IBM report “The New, New Media: Global lessons on the future of media, content and messaging”, several strategies are discussed to bring the Internet and its value to rural areas in the developing world. The strategies recognize two underlying assumptions: first, that many people these areas are illiterate, and second, that mobile phones, not laptops or desktops, are the devices of choice for millions in rural areas.
Two of these strategies I find particularly interesting and of value when thinking about health care.
Ranjan Kapur, country manager for India, WPP Group plc. argues for a universal visual language of icons — an iconic Esperanto if you will. He believes visual icons can become one of the easiest and most recognizable forms of communications, a universal code. And he wants to put this language on a mobile platform as one means to overcome the digital divide.
“The question is, can we develop a visual icon language that allows the rural community to actually interact through those visual icons to conduct commerce, conduct business, find enterprise solutions, and communicate with other people? “
And we should add to this list health care as well. Within this icon language, symbols that represent health conditions, medical questions or indicators of diagnostic value, for example, could be part any number of local, national or international public health efforts.
Another concept the report considers is what an “Audio Web” would look like.
“Not the Web as we know it, converted into a phone, but an Internet that could be navigated solely through the use of voice. . . Call it the “Spoken Web.”Real-time voice translation services would also go a long way toward enabling communications and commerce between dialects and languages that have strong oral cultures, yet very little literacy. “
The advantages here are obvious for a number of health purposes, especially, as the report indicates, for telemedicine.
One can only hope that our technological minds and commercial interests will move these innovative ideas along. The planet is waiting and ready.
