Safaricom Named One Of The Top 50 Most Innovative Companies In The World In 2012

Safaricom has been named by Technology Review magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world in 2012.

Safaricom was named in the list for deploying mobile health services over Kenya's cellular networks. The phone company recently introduced an app called MedAfrica that supplies first-aid recommendations from local hospitals, and health alerts and updates from other hospitals, as well as lists of doctors and dentists.

The app is a product of a mobile technology start-up called Shimba Technologies, and it's goal is to provide access to information on doctors, clinics, and other health-care information in a simple way, on smart phones, for ordinary Kenyans. In the future the app will also connect to a data feed from the Ministry of Health for information on things like disease outbreaks or the discovery of counterfeit drugs.

According to Technology Review, a company named in the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies (also called TR50) "is a business whose innovations force other businesses to alter their strategic course. TR50 members are nominated by Technology Review’s editors, who look for companies that over the last year have demonstrated original and valuable technology, are bringing that technology to market at a significant scale, and are clearly influencing their competitors."

The list included some of the world's largest companies such as Google, IBM, Apple, Shell, Siemens, Intel, Facebook, Twitter, General Electric, and Qualcomm.