The , a partnership between the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, will help facilitate projects that utilize mobile technology and will work with other public and private groups to further the initiative.

Some of the are simple, such as sending mobile phone users information on diseases via SMS. Another project lets health workers in Uganda log data on a PDA from the field. The time saved through utilizing these tools will cuts costs by 25%, .

The project stems from the fact that of the 4 billion mobile devices in use around the world belong to people in developing countries. Utilizing that existing technology will let health workers provide diagnostics and treatment on the ground.

For example, in one project, researchers from the University of Melbourne are creating a built-in calculator for the mobile phone that can determine drug dosage for a patient.

The projects are not limited to phones, either. One initiative in South Africa centers on the SIMpill, a sensor-equipped pill bottle with a SIM card. The bottle informs healthcare workers whether patients are taking tuberculosis medicines, according to a . As a result of using the bottle, the percentage of people taking their medications grew from 22 percent to 90 percent.