In Kurnool, a bustling urban center in southern India, more than 500 parents will receive critical vaccination alerts for their newborns via text message thanks to the tech entrepreneurs at Medic Mobile. The global nonprofit, which creates open-source tools to support health workers and the communities they serve, piloted the SMS-based system with a $5,000 grant from the Gates Foundation as part of last year's GOOD Vaccine Challenge calling for ideas to improve vaccine awareness and access.

According to the latest report by Juniper Research, a burgeoning market for healthcare peripherals and increasing smartphone processing power will result in the number of patients monitored by mobile networks to rise to 3 million by 2016. Using a smartphone as a hub, remote patient monitoring will also lower the cost of mHealth services by reducing the need for costly tailored devices.

Aetna is set to begin a trial program that equips New York City-area dentists with iPads to help them better educate their patients about tobacco use in an effort to curb smoking. The trial program includes a clinical decision support system (CDSS) that is built on a medical knowledge base, patient data, and decision support technology that provides dentists with personally targeted advice for each patient.

The US mobile advertising market is growing far faster than expected, driven by the rapid ascension of Google’s mobile search advertising business, advertisers’ growing attraction to display inventory on tablet and smartphone devices, and the growing roster of mobile ad networks such as Google’s AdMob, Apple’s iAd and Millennial Media.

Nine million Kaiser Permanente patients can now access their own medical information anywhere in the world on mobile devices through a mobile-optimized website, Kaiser executives announced today.

Kaiser Permanente has released a new app for Android devices, and users of other mobile devices, including the iPhone. The app provides full access to the patient information that resides on the Kaiser Permanente health record system with the mobile-optimized version of kp.org.