Of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell said, "I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."
And what subsequent developments! In just the last five years, today's telephone -- "mobile communications," in modern parlance -- has moved into a new business line: medicine.
My recent innovation challenge (Doctor in your pocket) invited Post readers to brainstorm low-cost mobile phone applications that could dramatically improve health care in this country and abroad. Entrepreneurs from around the world then wrote to me to describe their proprietary tools for "mobile health" or "mHealth".
The breadth of mobile phone applications now available for health care is inspiring. In the area of chronic disease -- notably diabetes -- mobile health is flourishing. For example, when a patient taps in her blood glucose levels by text messaging, a physician can then adjust insulin dosage with a return SMS.
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