‘Mobile Midwife’ Taps Technology To Improve Health Care

MANILA, Philippines—Fermina Flores, 60, has been working as a midwife in the municipality of Gerona, Tarlac for the past 34 years, covering four barangays (villages) with a combined population of around 8,000.

Every day she goes around and provide local residents with regular blood-pressure checks, pre- and post-natal checkups, family planning sessions, as well as helping pregnant women deliver babies.

And she does it all with the help of her high-tech 3G wireless data network-capable tablet computer that can record patients’ health information and report it to the nearest health clinic or even to major hospitals.

Flores is among the first of a new kind of health worker in the Philippines: “the mobile midwife” that is made possible through international mobile technology company Qualcomm Incorporated’s “Wireless Access for Health (WAH)” project with the Department of Health (DOH).