1. Why PocketDoctor?

The story starts with HealthAmigo, a medical technology company specialising in using wireless technology for the provision of consumer-facing health services.

One of the cornerstones of their global portfolio was the creation of a multi-platform health resource, allowing immediate access to health information from a range of devices: WAP phones, 3G handsets, Palm Pilots, the web and more.

HealthAmigo's goal was to empower patients with immediate access to a "doctor in your pocket", allowing patients to take more control of their own health, no matter where they were worldwide. Tying in with contemporary ideas about the role of the "patient-consumer", the service also aimed to provide first-instance healthcare information to members of the public typically intimidated by the medical profession.

2. What we did

Future Platforms were contracted to design and build the PocketDoctor service in October 2000. Following the initial launch, we have supported the distribution of PocketDoctor across a series of mobile operators worldwide, adapting the service to each operator's design guidelines and technical platform.

Future Platforms created a range of services including:

• Health-E-Ref, a medical encyclopaedia which can be either browsed (by body area or alphabetically), or searched for specific information
• Symptoms Analyser, an application giving patients an analysis of their symptoms associated with a wide range of illnesses
• Doctor Q, a service devised by Dr Phil Hammond (from TV's "Trust Me I'm A Doctor"), outlining the questions you should ask your doctor in specific situations.
• Specific healthcare guides targeting particular target segments: childrens health, travel health and first aid.

3. Results

Since launch, the service has been a resounding success; traffic has grown steadily to levels exceeding 1.5 million visits per month.

PocketDoctor won the "Health" category of the 2001 New Media Age Effectiveness Awards and made it as a finalist in Marketing Magazine's Connections 2000 awards in the "Best use of mobile phones/WAP for customer communications' category. It also appears regularly in the Mobile Data Associations "Recommended WAP sites"

The most telling result was however the wide distribution it achieved through contracts with Vodafone live!, O2, Orange (UK), T-mobile (UK and Germany), Meteor (Ireland), iTouch (South Africa), Mavica (Russia), SingTel (Singapore), Sprint PCS (USA) and AvantGo. 5 years on, PocketDoctor is still the worlds leading mobile healthcare service.

News

The PocketDoctor service on Vodafone live! is still evolving. We have just completed a small update.

PocketDoktor launched today onto T-Mobile in Germany and Austria. The service consists of key German-language elements of the popular PocketDoctor WAP application.

An extension to the Vodafone live! PocketDoctor service launched today: Travel Healthcare gives you all the vital information you'll need when travelling abroad. Vaccinations, common complaints, and other need-to-know stuff... and it's all part of your monthly PocketDoctor subscription!

Vodafone has awarded a contract to HealthAmigo to bring the award-winning wireless healthcare service, PocketDoctor, to Vodafone live! users.

PocketDoctor is now available to subscribers of the Irish mobile operator Meteor.

The PocketDoctor suite of cross-platform healthcare services is now available to subscribers of the T-Mobile network.

Future Platforms launched the world's first 3G healthcare services today.

The PocketDoctor service was last night announced as winner in the "Health" category of the New Media Age Effectivess Awards.

The First Aid services of PocketDoctor went live today. They consist of a glossary of emergency situations, and how to handle each of them.

Contact Magazine, the new monthly from wVIP, reviewed the PocketDoctor service in their WAP guide and gave it a 5/5 rating.

We've now added text messaging services to PocketDoctor; visitors to the WAP site who register their interest will receive a text message the next day, thanking them for their interest.

The integration of numerous additional features into Health Amigo's PocketDoctor service goes live: notably, an AvantGo channel, the launch of the web service, and upgrades to the WAP channel.