Bill Gates: mobile health technology will save lives, help overpopulation
By Melanie D.G. Kaplan
Nov 10, 2010
Translation by Autumnson Blog
WASHINGTON -– Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, gave a keynote address yesterday at the mHealth Summit, an annual gathering that focuses on improving health care through mobile technology.華盛頓 - 比爾和梅林達蓋茨基金會聯合主席和受託人比爾蓋茨，昨日在mHealth首腦會議作出一基調發言，一年會重點是通過流動科技改善衛生保健。
Gates told an audience of more than 2,000 that if we could register every worldwide birth on a cell phone, we could ensure that children receive the proper vaccines. He also said the key to controlling population growth is to save the lives of children under 5; and the next big thing in technology is robots.
蓋茨告訴超過2000名的觀眾，如果我們可以在手機上登記全世界的每位出生，我們可以確保兒童接受恰當的疫苗；他亦表示，控制人口增長的關鍵，是拯救5歲以下兒童的生命；以及科技的另一件大事是機器人。
Gates said computing technology has been great for health care, and there are plenty of opportunities to use the cell phone in clinic settings. Although he noted that some places which need mhealth technology the most may not be able to fully benefit from it.
蓋茨說電腦技術對醫療保健一直很好，而且有很多機會使用手機在臨床的設置。雖然他指出，有些地方最需要mhealth技術，但可能無法充分從它受益。
“We have to approach these things with some humility,” he said. “There’s not Internet connections back there. Often [patients are too sick] for some cell phone thing to do something for them.”
“我們必須以一些謙遜接近這些東西，”他說。 “回到那裡是沒有互聯網連接，通常[病人太虛弱]對於一些手機類的東西去為他們做些事情。“
Gates said the key health care metric that we as a society should be trying to improve is one that is in the front of his mind all the time–the number of children who die before age 5. Today, he said the number is 8.5 million; in 1960 it was 20 million.
蓋茨說，關鍵的衛生保健指標，我們作為一個社會應設法改善的，是一個常在他心中的前列 - 5歲前夭折的孩子數目 。今天，他說數字是850萬，在1960年是二千萬。
“About one-third [of that improvement] is by increasing income,” he said. “The majority has been through vaccines. Vaccines will be the key. If you could register every birth on a cell phone—get fingerprints, get a location—then you could [set up] systems to make sure the immunizations happen.”
“約三分之一[那改善的]是通過增加收入，”他說。 “大多數已是通過疫苗，疫苗將是關鍵。如果你能登記每一出生在手機上 - 得到指紋、得到位置 - 那麼你可[設置]系統以確保免疫接種發生。“
Gates said he’d like to see a birth registration system, and because it’s a new technology, “we should let 1,000 new ideas blossom.”
He said vaccination rates in poorer areas, such as northern Nigeria and northern India, are below 50 percent, and mobile technology could make a significant difference.
“When I think about the biggest impacts, I think aobut patient reminders,” Gates said. He explained that technology could help remind people to take the TB drugs regularly or remind mothers to do certain things in their child’s first year of life.
He also said technology will be important in monitoring the supply chain (i.e. making sure there aren’t counterfeits among vaccinations and medications) as well as saving lives on the ground. “Malaria and TB are going to be the first things where you say, ‘Wow, without this mobile application, all these people would have died.’”
Gates told the audience that there is no such thing as a healthy, high-population growth country. “If you’re healthy, you’re low-population growth,” he said.
While most of us assume that saving the lives of children will contribute to overpopulation, Gates said the contrary is true.
“The key thing, the most important fact that people should know and make sure other people know: As you save children under 5, that is the thing that reduces population growth. That sounds paradoxal. The fact is that within a decade of improving health outcomes, parents decide to have less children.
“As the world grows from 6 billion to 9 billion, all of that population growth is in urban slums,” he said. “Slums is a growing businesses. It’s a very interesting problem.”
He said no matter what we care about—the environment, schools, nutrition, conflict—the issues are insoluble at 3 percent population growth per year. “Nobody can handle that type of situation, so the best thing you can do is avoid those deaths.”
He said we are in a tough time for foreign aid, and governments are cutting their budgets in response to the financial climate. “The U.K. is quite exemplary,” he said. “They set aside their aid budget and are on track to keep their commitment. It will grow while they cut the rest of their budget. I hope it doesn’t get cut here in the U.S., but I’ll say I’m quite concerned that it will be.”
Gates said he has resorted to pleading for money. “I’m a beggar now,” he said. “I go around and beg governments for the final [millions of dollars] needed to eradicate polio. The financial component may be why it doesn’t get done.”
When asked what’s next in our technological advancement, Gates said there’s no doubt it’s robots. “If you don’t want to go to a convention,” he said, “just send a robot. “When we look at something like infant mortality, there’s a certain level you can’t get below if you can’t do C-sections.” He said doing a caesarean section delivery requires a sterile environment, but Gates said it’s fairly routine, so it could be done by a robot.
He said that we are moving from computers sitting idle while we type; to those that can see us and have high-end applications; to computers that allow us to move and connect with other users in applications like Xbox.
“Computers are learning to see, learning to talk ,learning to listen, learning to move around,” Gates said. “The dexterity things are maybe five years behind.” But he said once a robot learns a task, “it doesn’t forget how to do it. It can do it 24 hours a day.”
Gates used an example in South Africa to illustrate how health education doesn’t always lead to behavior change. He said the Gates Foundation partnered with the Kaiser Family Foundation to educate young people about HIV, with several types of outreach, including billboards. When interviewed, there was no question that the young people understood what caused HIV, but there were not significant behavior changes, because in their minds, the disease was in the distant future.
“If AIDS killed you immediately, things would be better because you’d see these piles of bodies outside bars [and think], ‘I don’t want to go in there… looks suspicious.’ It’s these discontinuities that are the problem,” Gates said. “If all the poor people lived in your neighborhood we wouldn’t have problems with foreign aid.”
http://www.smartplanet.com/people/blog/pure-genius/bill-gates-mobile-health-technology-will-save-lives-help-overpopulation/4908/
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