Focus

Hot on Brazil’s heels…

While Brazil is the leader in Latin America’s digital arena, other countries are also making strides. In Mexico, the government has introduced the groundbreaking Seguro Popular project, which aims to provide social security benefits to underprivileged citizens.

As part of the initiative, Seguro Popular introduced an eHealthcare smart card based solution in 2006. The smart card functions as both a means of identification and an ‘e-purse’ in which subsidies for treatment and prescriptions can be stored. Because the smart card can only be accessed by healthcare professionals using a special card reader, it records and stores patient information securely, thereby reducing both fraud and administrative costs.

Digital technology has also been applied to healthcare in Puerto Rico. There, the government has introduced the Tarjeta Inteligente de Salud (Health Smart Card), which integrates a microprocessor. It is the largest deployment of healthcare smart cards in Central America to date and has been hailed as an exemplar of how they can benefit healthcare providers, insurers and patients alike.

A more entertaining application was introduced in Argentina. Personal, one of the country’s three cellular carriers, now offers Microsoft’s Instant Messenger (IM) service. This allows Personal subscribers to use Windows Live to chat with friends on a cellphoneto- cellphone and cellphone-to-PC basis. This program is now available in many other Latin American countries as well.

Because the IM facility is on the SIM card, the adaptation of the popular Microsoft product has all the same features as on a PC. These include viewing connected contacts, changing the user’s availability status and keeping several chat sessions open simultaneously. What’s more, subscribers can access IM from any mobile device, making for 100 per cent service availability.