Appropriate healthcare technologies for low resource settings: use of m-technology in rural health care and education

The use of m-phones is rapidly spreading worldwide, reaching also the most isolated and socially marginalised communities. The opportunities it offers in public health are increasingly described in literature, however its potential in the training of, and support to local health workers has been only partially explored, less so its use in combination with innovative active learning approaches. The MobileDiagnosis experience shows that m-phones may be considered as an appropriate technology to educate, empower and mentoring local healthworkers, enabling team-work and collaboration among peers, contributing to improved health care quality locally, and making knowledge and experience widely accessible and shared globally. The m-phone is just a tool, its potential for the Common Good depends on the use we make of it, on our imagination and creativity. Our approach and experience is but a very small attempt to use it as a tool of liberating education.