Alumna Brooke Partridge, MPIA '91, Quoted in The Economist
Clever services on cheap mobile phones make a powerful combination—especially in poor countries
01/27/2011
The Economist
COUNTERFEIT drugs can make up around a quarter of all those sold in poor countries, according to some estimates. They provide a lucrative and lethal business, against which most consumers are powerless. “If your anti-malaria pill is made of any old white powder, you may not survive,” says Bright Simons, one of the founders of mPedigree, an advocacy group from Ghana.
Mr Simons is not just fighting with words. Late last year mPedigree launched a mobile service in Ghana and Nigeria that could make a dent in the fake-drug trade. People buying medicine scratch off a panel attached to the packaging. This reveals a code, which they can text to a computer system that looks it up in a database. Seconds later comes a reply saying whether the drug is genuine. The service is paid for by pharmaceutical companies that want to thwart the counterfeiters. Hewlett-Packard runs the computer system and found a cheap way to print the scratch-off labels.
This is just one of many such services mushrooming in poor countries, using mobile-phone technology that once carried only humble voice and text messages. Rohan Samarajiva, the boss of LIRNEasia, a think-tank in Sri Lanka, calls it “more than mobile”. Jussi Hinkkanen, Nokia’s head of policy in Africa, says the mobile revolution is moving “from ear to hand”.
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As CEO and founder of Vital Wave Consulting, Brooke Partridge has created the company to further emerging markets as a new discipline in business management. Her firm, now global in its scope, has helped set game-changing strategies in emerging markets for multinational firms. They also work with global foundations on scalable, sustainable business models for technology adoption in the developing world.
