02-Dec-14 Thanks to good mobile phone penetration in Guinea (63%), Liberia (60%) and Sierra Leone (44%), mHealth strategies could be an effective solution to mapping Ebola and providing education. IBM launched a disease-mapping system in Oct-14, allowing people to send free text messages about Ebola to the authorities, which feed into heat-maps linking emerging issues to location information. [image: IBM Research].

09-Jan-15 While drug makers say local regulators are ill-equipped and inadequately staffed to monitor them, the watchdogs in turn hold state governments responsible for failing to strengthen the supervisory mechanism. "The governments were in a mad rush to attract investments by creating tax havens but did not pay enough attention to… quality standards," a state drug controller said, admitting inadequacies in the system. [image: The Economic Times / BCCL]

09-Jan-15 To enable more private operators to relieve the pressure on China’s over-burdened healthcare sector, the government is encouraging physicians to practice at more than one institution, by reforming the doctor registration system, initially on a trial basis. Currently, most physicians work in public hospitals and need permission from the hospital to practice elsewhere. [image: YourHealth]

08-Jan-15 The Food & Drug Administration in Taiwan has reiterated its determination to facilitate easy access to drugs to further promote responsible self-medication, which it says can save people time waiting in hospitals and clinics, as well as considerable National Health Insurance spending. [image: GBI Research]

08-Jan-15 SK Telecom, Korea’s biggest mobile carrier, says it will invest more in healthcare business projects in 2015. “Our plan to boost health businesses generating 1 trillion won revenue by 2020 is still effective,” said an SK Telecom official. As faster networks power services related to the Internet of Things, healthcare has become a new growth engine. [image: SK Telecom]