Industry body, the GSMA, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Manchester to set up an Innovation Centre devoted towards health on the move.

The Manchester m-Health Innovation Centre will focus on "using mobile technology to enable people to play a more active role in determining their own health". The GSMA isn't actually funding the centre, but thinks it's a top idea to be fully endorsed.

Even Martin Cooper, once of the developers of the first mobile phone, has been banging on about how phones must apply their technology to healthcare, at least before the 80-year-old started complaining that handsets are just too complicated these days.

The centre will apparently be working on working on "a variety of health and wellbeing projects" including patient reminders and medication records, so we look forward to a day when your phone will be able to nag you when you're ordering a plate of chips or just sitting down to your mid-morning pint. ®

Related stories

• A phone in every car gains hard-won GSMA support (9 September 2009)
• Mobile operators pooh-pooh universal phone-snooping plan (28 August 2009)
• GSMA talks up embedded phones (30 June 2009)
• We can save the world, claim mobile operators (3 April 2009)
• GSMA scores 2, concedes 3, with EU (24 March 2009)
• Comment No writing on the wall is bad news for the GSMA (23 February 2009)