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this is fun - one of our two forum keynote speakers appears in a story in The Economist, on mobile lifestyles. http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950499 "Soon mobile technology could play a large role in detecting, mapping and responding to epidemics. A lot of information about a recent polio outbreak in Kenya became available because health workers were using hand-held devices to collect data that used to be recorded on paper forms. "The software on those devices, called EpiSurveyor and made by a not-for- profit organisation called DataDyne, is also used by health workers in Sierra Leone and Zambia. The World Health Organisation has now declared it to be the technological standard, and DataDyne is in the process of loading it onto ordinary mobile phones for use in poor countries everywhere, says Joel Selanikio, a doctor who co-founded the organisation. For most people in poor countries, he thinks, mobile phones are fast becoming the main communications tool, schoolbook, vaccination record, family album and many other things."