I had a chance to meet some of the folks from Sana, one of the award winners of the Vodafone Wireless Innovation Challenge that were announced yesterday at the Global Philanthropy Forum.

Sana, formerly known as MocaMobile, uses an open source platform to connect rural health providers, often nurses, to centralized medical expertise. The nurses can send texts, photos and diagnostic information to a secure site where experts can help with diagnosis and treatment for specific situations, ranging from chronic disease to emergency response. What is really important about Sana is not the technology but the focus on developing locally relevant standard practices of care, connecting local medical workers to each other so they can choose practices, develop protocols and standardize procedures in their context. It’s like helping doctors, nurses and community health workers design and implement their own Checklists, specific to their situations, and then putting those checklists on a secure, affordable, electronic platform that connects expertise. The goal? Patients get better care, faster.