100 recycled cell phones. That’s all it took. That, and a donated laptop, a copy of a free computer software which serves as a central text message hub, and a little bit of innovation for a college student to change the way patients receive and obtain treatment in a village in Malawi.

Josh Nesbit, a senior at Stanford University, may be on the cusp of changing healthcare for rural parts of the world forever.

As a result of his project, patients and healthcare workers no longer have to walk up to 100  miles just to receive or provide treatment. Within eight weeks of starting his project in the summer of 2008, Nesbit trained about 75 community health workers in text messaging and provided them with cell phones. At the local hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi,  a laptop running the SMS software, called FrontlineSMS, coordinates the health network’s SMS activities in a 100-mile radius. As a result of the SMS network, the hospital now responds to requests for remote patient care, informs community health workers of proper drug dosages and uses, receives patient updates, and easily facilitates general communication and group mobilization for volunteers and patients.

Speaking at the MobileActive BarCamp conference on February 21 — where techies, economic development workers and activists gathered to discuss and brainstorm the best ways to use mobile technology to impact social change — Nesbit clearly  had the attention of his peers — just a few people from the  United Nations staff and those involved with the Millennium Development Goals of 2015, among others involved with mobile technology and economic development.

Within six months of his project, Nesbit has been contacted by healthcare workers in about 20 countries seeking his service. Next month he’ll head to Uganda to implement the SMS-network there.

Right now he’s organizing a major drive to collect old cell phones to be used by volunteers and health workers. Got any leftover after you switched to an iPhone or Blackberry? Give ‘em up and you’ll be contributing to the latest phase in rural healthcare. Find out how, here. 

Not bad work for a college kid with a cell phone.