Researchers say that mobile phones can help cut costs, solve rural healthcare problems and reduce medical errors.

Bioengineering professor Boris Rubinsky from University of California says mobile phones are the perfect answer to expensive, bulky and complicated medical machines.

Rubinsky added that by downgrading a complex electromagnetic imaging machine to a portable scanner that would work in conjunction with a regular cell phone, doctors and hospitals pays only hundreds of dollars, instead of $10,000 for large equipment. With this alternative, anyone can plug the mobile scanner into the phone, beam in the data or images to the computer and transmit the generated image to a hospital or doctor far away.

Rubinsky is not alone in seeing the potential of iPhones and other phones to help the medical industry. Around 30 healthcare-related projects at different universities funded by Microsoft Research involved cell phones. Studies included taking ultrasound readings to a cell phone or TV, creating a heart monitor that relies on a cell phone to analyze readings, providing emergency responders, reducing medical errors and many more.

The iPhone has been popular for several graphics-rich medical applications, made perfect due to its large color screen and web access capability. Life Record, a software company, has developed a program in helping physicians view medical records, such as brain scans and ECGs on their iPhones, even on the go. The company also plans to introduce an application allowing individuals to access their respective medical records from their iPhones for $50 annually.

Due to the high demand of iPhones in the market, more and more software developers are creating medical-related cell phone software. Experts at Ambient Insight believe that sales of phone applications for medical professions would see an increase from $111 million last year to $276 million by 2011.