Bill Gates seems to relish being the skunk at the garden party. The former b

游客2023-12-14  3

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. " [br] Peter Neupert, UltraLinq and AT&T are mentioned to show that

选项 A、these companies are interested in cloud computing.
B、m-health will achieve success with cloud computing.
C、cloud computing will transform wireless health.
D、m-health has set off a rush to go in for it.

答案 D

解析 推断题。由题干中的Peter Neupert,UhraLinq and AT&T定位至第四段。首句指出“Another reason to think that m-heath has a promising future is the flurry of business interest in it.”,这是作者的一个观点。根据英文行文结构可知,在提出一个观点之后,作者会对其展开说明,可以用例证、引证等支持性细节。显然本段采用的是例证法,提到的这三家公司都是为了说明首句观点,即the flurry of business interest in it,[D]是对该部分内容的阐释,故为答案。第二句提到了cloud computing,但是细节中提到的内容,不是三个例证用以说明的主题观点,排除[A];同理,[B]和[C]与该段首句主题句观点也不一致,排除。
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