Health advice smartphone app launches in South Africa

A smartphone app designed and launched in South Africa is quite literally a pocket doctor for those who can afford the mobile phones required.

Afridoctor is a mobile phone application that is more popular outside of Africa.

Afridoctor is the continent's first personal mobile health clinic. It was created by Blueworld, a social media company in based in Cape Town

It offers a "snapdiagnosis" service, in which patients can send pictures of their ailment to a panel of doctors who will then contact their patient with a diagnosis within 48 hours.

"It is more for external use - like dermatology - for things like a bee sting or a snake bite and you don't know what to do or how to diagnose it," said Werner Erasmusen who created the app.

Educate and inform

Other key features of Afridoctor include "find a doctor" and "distress" as well as first aid tips and a symptom checker.

The "find a doctor" system uses Google Maps to geo-locate local health services including doctors, hospitals and emergency clinics.

The distress feature enables users to contact a family member or friend at the touch of a button.

By storing the mobile phone number of a chosen next of kin, they will then be notified of the phone's location when the distress button is pressed.

Despite its African origins, the application is proving more popular outside the continent.

"All the requests we tend to get for snapdiagnosis are from overseas. There have so far been 20,000 downloads of the app," said Mr Erasmusen.

"With the snapdiagnosis, we haven't had that much feedback because most people in Africa don't have smartphones - they're using second generation mobile phones."

Targeted services

Limiting the technology to a smartphone-based application is a mistake, said technology expert Bill Thompson.

"Locking data and services into applications on smartphones, and not doing things on the open web may be a mistake in the long-term.

"There are 3.5 million people in South Africa who have phones capable of surfing the web - but there are far fewer who have the sort of smartphones that will be able to run Afridoctor.

"There should be some thinking or targeting ahead about what the appropriate way is to deliver a service."

Mr Thompson suggested that the applications could be browser-based instead, which would enabled them to be accessed from a wider range of devices.

Afridoctor was developed for high-end Nokia mobile phones but Blueworld is hoping to strip it down so that the app can work on less technologically savvy handsets.

App creator Werner Erasmusen is also hoping that smartphone technology will come to the continent soon.

"Africa will have smartphones in about two to three years, it's just a question of time."