"It’s incredibly quick," said Peat, "I mean we have a data bulletin in 24 hours, where it took us months to generate a data bulletin before. And we can have a written report within three days. I mean to be straight, it requires a person sitting behind a computer and putting in a full day. But in all the RAMPS we’ve done to date, we’ve had a data bulletin out in 24 hours and we’ve had the first draft of the survey report out in three days."

The faster the information is gathered, the faster the response.

"This tool allows us very quickly to get to the root of the issue. It allows us to say immediately these are where we have problems. These are where we want to change the health indicators. And this tool gives us that data and the nice thing about it is you can monitor progress very quickly," he said.

The World Health Organization and top epidemiologists helped the Red Cross develop RAMP. The mobile phone survey is being used to help Kenya and other African countries reach the Millennium Development Goals on health. The target date for the MDGs is 2015.