Nokia Health Services on Ovi Life Tools

Nokia has recently introduced Health Services as a vertical on its Ovi Life Tools. Ovi Life Tools is a range of personalised services covering Agriculture, Education, Entertainment and Health targeted at both urban and rural consumers.

These services are designed to address information gaps thus enabling consumers to be better informed and positively impact their life improvement and livelihood needs. A farmer subscribing to the service, for example, will get data on price and quantity arrived in a few agricultural produces markets (mandis) near his village on a daily basis for a chosen number of commodities. This in turn will help farmers take informed decisions on which mandi would give them the best price.

The applications of OVI Life Tools come pre-bundled in 22 models of Nokia handsets whose price range between Rs 1,000 to Rs 7,000. Talking to Deccan Herald Nokia Director-Emerging Markets Services Natesh B V said, “started as a pilot project about 18 months ago, Ovi Life Tools services have now been launched 12 Indian languages and has covered 18 states in the country.”   

The Ovi Life Tools is an application where the information is sent by Nokia to subscribers through sms. Though the information comes in text form, it appears on the screen some what like HTML page. “Information is pushed into handsets hence there is no need for internet connectivity for the same,” pointed out Natesh.

Nokia Ovi Life Tools is built on the philosophy of a strong ecosystem connect. For the agriculture vertical, for example, Nokia has 24 partners – local government departments, NGOs and individual entities, to provide information and content.

Said Natesh, “Our entire approach has been to create a strong and sustainable ecosystem of partners who have invaluable expertise in the relevant fields of Agriculture, Education and Health.

The recent addition of healthcare in Ovi tools is a suite of livelihood and life improvement services.

Since ‘Staying Healthy’ is a primary concern for consumers, this service was designed to provide information on the following areas: pregnancy and child care advices for mother and child, health and fitness information for men and women and basic information on health issues like respiratory problems, diabetes and maintaining a healthy heart.

Though the primary objective of Ovi Life Tools is to serve a social need, it is working as a a major differentiator for the Nokia brand at the market place where lower-priced phones are getting commoditised, agreed Natesh.