How far are you from the nearest heart monitor or ultrasound machine or high-tech imaging equipment? Reach in your pocket. Soon, cell phones will be able to provide these and other medical diagnostics.

"The cell phone is going to solve rural health-care problems, whether it's rural India or rural Indiana," Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research's program manager for external research in biomedical computing, told Business Week's Olga Kharif [1]. Microsoft is funding 17 research efforts into using cell phones for an array of medical purposes.

Kharif writes that Apple's iPhone is being adapted for medical applications too. A new software program that works with the iPhone makes it possible to physicians far from a patient's bedside to review that patient's records -- even brain scans and X-rays -- with accuracy.