The Communication Initiative Network

Where communication and media are central to social and economic development

E-magazines


Average Rating: no ratings submitted

Making the eHealth Connection: Global Partnerships, Local Solutions

Region

Global

Programme Summary

During the summer of 2008, The Rockefeller Foundation joined with several partners to organise an invitation-only international conference on harnessing internet-enabled technologies to improve public healthcare, even in the most challenging conditions. Academics, information and communication technology (ICT) experts, health professionals, researchers, and policy analysts from around the world gathered in Bellagio, Italy, for two parallel conference sessions (July 13 to August 8 2008). Conference conversation examined eHealth barriers, enablers, and successful sustainability models, and is being continued through an interactive website. The purpose of this in-person and online gathering is to help focus greater global attention on the under-utilised opportunities associated with use of ICTs for improving health, as well as to support the development of a sustainable plan for rolling out internet-based platforms, to promote interoperability and open standards, and to encourage new partnerships, collaborations, and coalitions.

Communication Strategies

Keynote presentations opening each of the first two week-long sessions highlighted the plight of economically poor and vulnerable people around the world, and illustrated the ways that ICTs could be brought to bear on addressing a variety of health problems. For example, one speaker expressed optimism that the mobile phone generation will adapt to and adopt new technologies to address the gap in health services between developed and developing countries, demonstrating how video technology could be used to show complicated health procedures – including complex surgeries - to health practitioners far afield. One theme running throughout many of the presentations was that of the power of collaboration and advocacy to support the development of eHealth. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Tim Evans challenged participants to create meaningful alliances and partnerships that will place eHealth more centrally on the global health agenda.

By offering video and PowerPoint presentations of these presentations, as well as downloadable materials from each conference session, on the Making the eHealth Connection website, organisers hope to make the information provided at the conference accessible to a wider audience. For example, by accessing the PowerPoint presentation titled "Reaching a Vision for eHealth Through Collaboration", one may read about the core concepts behind the initiative. In addition, to carry through on the exchange of ideas between sectors and regions that occurred during the small-group presentations, large-group discussions, and break-out meetings held in Bellagio on each week's themes, a series of interactive blogs on the site is designed to provide an interactive platform for comments and responses to the ideas coming out of Bellagio.

Also, organisers launched an e-group with the goal of collecting photos from the field of eHealth. The point of this group is not to define eHealth, but to share photographs of all uses of ICTs to improve health of populations and individuals. To seed the group, this online space started with photos of people joining the Bellagio conference series, but they "encourage others working in the field of eHealth to join the group, and share your photos of conferences, convenings, systems, architectures, patients, teachers, researchers, users, servers, mobile data collection systems, telemedicine samples, infrastructure set-ups, late-night coding sessions, and everything else dealing with the wide world of eHealth."

Development Issues

Health, Technology.

Key Points

According to organisers, "some countries (such as Brazil, Thailand, and Rwanda) are already committed to major eHealth endeavors while others are poised to follow suit. Yet, despite this promising burst of activity, many questions remain about how eHealth can become sustainable and bring about significant change. With technology now at a tipping point in the Global South, experts agree that this is the optimal moment for eHealth to have the greatest impact. For the first time, for example, there are more people in the world with mobile phones than without - some 3.5 billion cell phone users in all. Not only have wireless networks spread rapidly throughout the Global South, but fewer old systems exist than in the Global North. This environment has created a fresh technical infrastructure that can allow eHealth to 'leapfrog' toward integrated national eHealth platforms."

The action-oriented agenda of Making the eHealth Connection includes 8 key areas, all designed to identify new approaches for delivering health services and information in a fundamentally different way throughout the Global South:

  1. Public health informatics and national health information systems
  2. Interoperability
  3. Access to health information and knowledge-sharing
  4. Health informatics and eHealth capacity building
  5. Electronic health records
  6. Mobile health and telemedicine
  7. eHealth markets
  8. National eHealth policies

Partners

The Rockefeller Foundation, the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), Health Level Seven (HL7), Health Metrics Network (HMN), International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME), Partners in Health (PIH), Public Health Institute, Regenstrief Institute, Telemedicine Society of India, United Nations Foundation (UN Foundation), University of Washington's Center for Public Health Informatics (CPHI), Vodafone Group Foundation, and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Contact

Ariel Pablos-Mendez
Managing Director, Making the eHealth Connection
The Rockefeller Foundation

420 5th Avenue

New York NY
10018
United States
Tel: 212 869 8500
Fax: 212 764 3468


Karl Brown
Associate Director, Making the eHealth Connection
The Rockefeller Foundation

420 5th Avenue

New York NY
10018
United States
Tel: 212 869 8500
Fax: 212 764 3468

Source

"Africa: Internet Technology Can Boost Healthcare", by Boakai M. Fofana, allAfrica.com, July 23 2008; and Making the eHealth Connection website.


Placed on the Communication Initiative site August 19 2008
Last Updated August 19 2008



How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work?


0
No votes yet
Your rating: None

Post your comments (review comments from others below):

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

COMMENTS POSTED


Help Seed The CI Network

Jobs and more...

Journalist/Reader Connection

What are the best possibilities for journalist-readership connections? (you may choose more than one; please add clarifying comments)