We are in the midst of a mobile revolution, with the number of mobile subscriptions expected to surpass the number of humans on the planet this year. Mobile phones not only connect people to each other,

but to vital health information, commercial markets, and financial services like savings and payment accounts. And these are just early uses, mobile innovation is flourishing in communities around the world.

With just over 700 days to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – eight goals embraced by the United Nations and governments to improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable by 2015 – mobile technologies are playing an increasingly important role in accelerating development efforts.

The field of mobile health (mHealth) has shown tremendous promise in recent years to advance, in particular, child and maternal health (MDGs 4 and 5). At this moment, pregnant women – many of whom don’t have easy access to a health worker or facility – are receiving health information through their mobile phones to promote safe pregnancies. Mobile phones are tracking disease outbreaks, speeding up diagnoses, educating citizens on how to stay healthy, and reminding families to vaccinate their children. They are helping frontline health workers provide better care and more effective treatment for their patients, enhancing efforts to eliminate the transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their newborns, promoting the distribution and correct use of bed nets for malaria prevention, and more.

Many of these mHealth projects complement and support the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s   movement, which brings together governments, companies, multilateral organizations, and civil society to save the lives of women and children. For example, FHI 360 is working on a project to expand access to family planning information for communities in Kenya and Tanzania – one of the international community’s most important requirements to improve maternal and child health and protect the rights of women and girls.

Mobile health efforts are also helping drive progress on other important global challenges beyond maternal and child health. For instance, many mHealth programs are becoming increasingly integrated with financial transactions and mobile money, helping to fight poverty (MDG 1). Mobile technologies are also helping to empower women and promote gender equality (MDG 3) by providing autonomy and access to health and other information and services.

Throughout the world, more than one billion women in developing countries have access to a mobile phone, and nine out of 10 women who use mobile phones say they feel safer and more connected with friends and family. While a mobile gender gap stubbornly persists (a report from GSMA found that women in developing countries are 21 percent less likely to own a phone than men), mobile has begun to have a significant impact on empowering women and giving them greater economic independence and control over their own health. Given these benefits, the UN’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development and other organizations are working to close the information and communication technology (ICT) gender gap. And increasingly, implementers of mobile technology are working to ensure that women and girls, often the beneficiaries of ICT for development projects, are also equal participants in the creation of these interventions and the policies that govern access and use.

Our challenge – and our opportunity – is to maximize the use of mobile technologies to make progress toward the MDGs, especially the goals to reduce child and maternal mortality, which require stronger action. We need to grow the body of research in the use of mobile for development, scale up projects that have been proven successful, and develop new and innovative technologies and programs.

At the same time, we need to make sure that mHealth and the broader field of mobile technology are included in the discussion around the post-2015 development agenda. Right now, the international community, under a process led by the United Nations, is planning for what comes after the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. This new agenda will provide shared global goals and a roadmap to get us to a more sustainable, fair, and equitable world by 2030. Mobile technologies and services can and must play an important role in achieving this brighter future.

Last spring, the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda released a report that discussed the mobile opportunity, writing, “The number of mobile phone subscriptions has risen from fewer than a billion to more than six billion, and with it many mobile (m-) applications – m-banking, m-health, m-learning, m-taxes – that can radically change economies and service delivery in sustainable way.” To realize the promise of this technology, we must make sure that mobile is a key part of the development dialogue in the years to come.

We have only begun to scratch the surface of the power of mobile. Its potential to drive development both now and post-2015 is enormous: From alleviating poverty to expanding educational opportunities to improving health, mobile technologies can help transform the lives of billions, and particularly the lives of women and girls. Now we must seize this opportunity. GHD