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  3. Bill Gates seems to relish being the skunk at the garden party. The former boss of Microsoft, now a global-health philanthropist

Bill Gates seems to relish being the skunk at the garden party. The former boss of Microsoft, now a global-health philanthropist

admin2012-03-23  28
问题     Bill Gates seems to relish being the skunk at the garden party. The former boss of Microsoft, now a global-health philanthropist, was invited to address a big "m-health" conference in Washington, D. C. Some 2,400 proponents of delivering health services over wireless telecoms, from the private and public sectors, gathered to celebrate the dozens of pilot projects under way around the world.
    Mr. Gates, however, warned the participants not to celebrate too soon. Just because an m-health pilot scheme appears to work in some remote locale, he insisted, don’t "fool yourself" into thinking it really works unless it can be replicated at scale. Rafael Anta of the Inter-American Development Bank was even more cautious: "We know little about impact and nothing about business models. "
    Happily, evidence of m-health’s usefulness is at last starting to trickle in. A study in the Lancet, a medical journal, shows that something as simple as sending text messages to remind Kenyan patients to take their HIV drugs properly improved adherence to the therapy by 12%. Weldon, an American firm, found in a recent trial that an m-health scheme that relies on behavioral psychology to give diabetics advice on managing their ailment has more effect than putting them on the leading diabetes drug.
    Another reason to think that m-health has a promising future is the flurry of business interest in it. One push comes from the rise of cloud computing (providing data storage and processing over the internet), which Peter Newport of Microsoft argues will be "transformative" for wireless health. UltraLinq, an American start-up, uses the cloud to offer medical imaging on the software-as-a-service model. AT&T, a telecoms giant that already collects revenues of $ 4 billion a year from health care, has just created a division devoted to pursuing wireless health-care business using cloud computing.
    A second shove will come from American policy, which will dispense more than $30 billion in subsidies over the next few years to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic medical records. This coming digitization of America’s disgracefully paper-based health system will, argues Todd Park of the Department of Health, inevitably boost m-health.
    A further impetus is likely to be provided by ideas bubbling up from developing countries. Victoria Houseman of Dasburg, a development consultancy, has surveyed dozens of m-health business models in Haiti, India and Kenya in work for the World Bank. She predicts that mobile banking, which has already taken off in Kenya, will be a great enabler of m-health. Firms are coming up with ways for patients to pay doctors, receive subsidy vouchers and so on, using their phones.
    Substituting technology for labor (such as the absent doctor at the government clinic) is another trend. Health point Services, a start-up, is establishing for-profit centers in rural Punjab, in India, that provide health services, as well as clean water. Its health workers roam with backpacks carrying diagnostic equipment; a mobile phone captures and interprets the data, which can then be used for paid telemedicine consultations. Procter &. Gamble, an American consumer-products giant, announced a commercial partnership with Health point.
    No doubt a dose of skepticism is warranted about m-health. But given the growing evidence of its usefulness and the new business models from emerging markets, there is reason for hope too. As Mr. Gates pointed out, "Middle-income countries are where most innovation in health care is going to come from. "
The passage aims to tell us that
选项 A、wireless health care is bound to replace the existing health care.
B、the convergence of mobile telephony and health care is under way.
C、health services will be delivered over wireless telecoms soon.
D、there are new business models from developing countries.
答案B
解析 主旨题。本文开篇提到比尔?盖茨应邀参加“移动医疗”会议，引出一些人对移动医疗的质疑。第三段话锋一转，指出移动医疗的实用性开始显现。之后开始分析移动医疗前途无量的理由：商业利益剧增；美国政府的支持；发展中国家的新点子；人工替代技术。最后总结认为移动医疗充满希望。可见全文围绕移动医疗展开说明，介绍了其现状，并展望其未来，故[B]“移动电话与医疗保健的融合之旅正扬帆起航”为本文主旨，故为答案。作者在文章中对移动医疗持正面看法，但使用的是“there is reason for hope too”这样比较客观的表述，没有指明移动医疗一定会取得成功，排除[A]；从全文的例证可以看出移动医疗现在已经开始应用，[C]在时态上与原文不符；[D]是末段提到的细节，非主旨内容，排除。
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