Smartphone? That will do nicely sir

Your mobile is set to become a new way to pay at the store, track your health care and conduct all manner of everyday transactions. But universal acceptance will depend on regulation and security issues being ironed out.

In the near future, you will pop into your neighbourhood pharmacy and acquire your prescription by beaming information stored in your smartphone to your chemist.

Paying for the medication will be just as simple, as a swipe of the mobile at the cash register pays the bill in seconds. As you leave the pharmacy, your doctor and bank will have been instantly notified of the transaction. So if any follow-up is needed, such as a reminder to come in for a medical consultation or to advise you of a new bill payment scheme, you will receive a text message. It is an old story that mobiles are able to do much more than just make phone calls. But as technology matures, these "super" smartphones will soon seem like a normal part of everyday life and become integral when dealing with health and financial matters.

Mobile phone makers invested US$20 billion (Dh73.46bn) last year on research and development. Part of that was spent on looking at new ways to expand into other sectors. "I'm sure that when every phone is a smartphone it will be a no-brainer," says John Ure, the director of the telecommunications research project of the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong. "If it is a heck of a lot more convenient than using a wallet I think a lot of people will go for it."

Linking the telecommunications world with the financial and healthcare sectors are not new ideas. But as telecoms operators experience shrinking margins and increased competition, it seems natural that other industries are being investigated for revenue. By owning and managing their mobile networks, telecoms operators will be able to profit from controlling the platform needed to connect patients and bank clients.

The potential for new revenues is already there. While it is difficult to gauge how much has been spent to expand the mobile banking market, every lender has created a small research and development team to look into developing applications and tools for their clients. It is estimated that by 2015, 407 million people worldwide will carry out financial transactions using mobile phones, figures from ABI Research show.

Applications for smartphones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry in managing bank accounts have been around for several years, while trials are being conducted to use mobiles for money transfer and at cash registers, using radio frequency microchips. "It is a huge opportunity," says Prasad Katta, the regional business development director for Western Union. "But the biggest challenges we still need to overcome for any transaction between a mobile and another client is whether the money that you send is the same amount that was received, and has it been reached safely."

The mobile healthcare market is projected to grow to $4.6bn by 2014, according to a report by the strategic consulting firm CSMG. Some of the tools healthcare engineers are developing for the mobile world include monitoring foetal heart rate with smartphones, and aiding communities in remote areas to manage diabetes. There are also about 5,000 medical-related iPhone applications that can perform a range of actions, from training to diagnosing illnesses.

While the smartphone can provide an instant link between patient and doctor, the tablet device may also be a boon for the healthcare sector. About 20 per cent of healthcare workers say they are interested in the iPad, according to a survey by the medical applications provider Epocrates. "The mobile technology revolution is helping to speed change the health care world on its head," said Simon Leary, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, at a recent telecoms conference in Doha.

"Efficiency increases through the swapping of real-time data around clinical conditions. There's less duplications, there's better quality, less death as a result of reduced medical error and a fundamental change in how you deliver medical diagnoses." In the Middle East, the Wireless Innovations Centre at Qatar University is working on mobile healthcare initiatives with local telecoms operators to build a monitoring service.

"There's a lot of experimentation going on here," says Adnan Abu-Dayya, the executive director of the centre. "We need to understand the technology, user behaviour and the value we can create here to be part of the solution." Despite the impact the brave new world of health care and banking may have on the telecoms market, progress is slow. As industry experts put it, there are too many players in each market, making a widely adopted worldwide rollout of any new service far too complex to achieve overnight.

Regulations, capital investment disputes and security issues are also cited as the main obstacles in delaying wide-scale worldwide deployment. "It's still very early days," says Mr Ure. "Younger tech-savvy people have no problem with this at all and it will likely take another 10 years until everybody feels comfortable with using their mobile phone in that way." [e-mail]