Emerging trend: outsourcing basic medical work via smartphone

VizWiz is a mobile app that lets visually impaired people pay strangers to "see" objects for them. A person with vision loss could take a picture of a dollar bill and post it using the app. Strangers recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk could look at the bill and then tell the person its worth for a few cents an answer.

Co.Exist reports that development experts see such "microwork" as an exciting possibility for both job creation and health care improvement.

A report by the World Bank highlights the appeals of microwork, which can offer a means of income to anyone with a mobile phone. Bradley Kreit writes:

The report estimated that while the current global marketplace for microwork is in the neighborhood of 'double-digit millions,' a very rough calculation estimates 'the microwork market could be worth several billion dollars within the next five years.' The World Bank has since partnered with Nokia to launch a global contest to generate new ideas into the kinds of microwork that people could do with just a smartphone, which point toward some of the ways that microwork could advance global health and well-being.

Microworkers could check whether a drug is in stock in a pharmacy or interpret the results of basic digital x-rays.

By filling these basic medical needs, microwork could reduce health care costs in developed countries, while offering people in developing countries an entry point into digital careers.

[Via Co.Exist]

Photo: QuinnDombrowski/Flickr

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com