Hi Neil, colleagues,
The question "how long it will take for smartphone ownership to be available to more than, say, 90% of the world population” depends on what is a “smartphone”. Some “feature” phones (broadly those without a touch screen) do have the ability to support commonly used “smartphone” applications like Whatapp - specifically those running KaiOS. This is now changing because of limited support for this mobile operating system: https://www.techadvisor.com/article/2524806/whatsapp-will-soon-stop-work...
A related question is whether “ownership” of a smartphone is sufficient for healthcare use. Smartphone ownership does not mean that healthcare workers can or are able to use their phones for healthcare purposes like those your post/article talks about (e.g. use as a cardiac monitor). Whether they “can” relates to phone memory, or internet access needed to run such apps, and it is likely that a number of cheaper smartphones available in LMIC markets are unable to support such uses. Whether they are “able to” relates to a number of factors, but includes the design (formal or informal) of how smartphones need to be used to support healthcare (a simple call? Sharing an image on WhatsApp? Zoom meeting for training? Downloading and using a cardiac monitor for some patients? Using a medical record system to document every patient/client encounter?).
While smartphone availability to healthcare workers is an important step, it tends to hide many important factors that determine the use of smartphones (personal or shared) for healthcare. My personal feeling is that these are the systemic, “wicked" problems (some broadly related to equity and access to technology, and others specific to the use of technology in health) that the health tech community should focus on.
HIFA profile: Pratap Kumar is CEO / Sr. Lecturer of Health-E-Net Limited / Strathmore Business School, Kenya. Professional interests: Health information, clinical quality improvement, paper interfaces to electronic data. Email address: pratap AT health-e-net.org