Health – Page 2 – Integra LLC

Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach mHealth Project to Improve Cardiovascular Disease in Resource Scarce China

Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach™ initiative, the strategic initiative of the wireless chipset manufacturer, has partnered with Life Care Networks and the Community Health Association of China to start a mHealth project focused on improving prevention and care of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in rural China. The project, Wireless Heart Health, was launched back in September in community health clinics in three provinces (Shandong, Anhui, and Sichuan) and one municipality (Chongqing).

Photo Credit: Qualcomm

In the past, most mHealth projects in rural areas have focused on acute diseases. These diseases are easier to handle via treatment and/or prevention, which allows for numerous mHealth interventions including appointment and pill reminders as well as data collection and information dissemination. But chronic diseases are becoming a larger public health issue in rapidly developing countries. Within China, CVD is the leading cause of death. By leveraging mobile technology to reach the rural community clinics, patients and health workers in rural areas can be connected directly with trained medical personnel in an urban area. While this type of connection is common in many countries (see MTN CareConnect in South Africa), the level of technology sophistication in this project allows for more in-depth data to be gathered and transferred to trained doctors.

Project Details

Life Care Networks developed a cardiovascular monitoring system that uses China Telecom’s 3G network to send heart data to cardiac specialists, who can provide rapid patient feedback. The system includes an electrocardiogram (ECG) senor on a smartphone, electronic medical record software, and workstations at the community clinics. The ECG-enabled smartphone has a gold rim around the outside part of it which is the senor. The patient simply holds the top and bottom of the phone in order for it to read their heart data. The medical records software is web-based and includes all past data collected in the clinic. This allows for both the community health workers and the doctors in the call center to have access to historical data in order to provide better care to the patients.

Within the project, the community health clinics are connected via the 3G network directly to cardiac specialists in the Beijing Life Care Networks Call Center. Using the ECG sensor along with the software and workstations, the patient data is sent to the call center and allows for real-time feedback either by SMS or voice. The call center is open 24-hours a day, and their services range from monitoring and diagnosis to treatment and referral. Referrals are especially important in these clinics as the clinic staff often do not have the knowledge and expertise to treat complicated cardiovascular issues. Because the smartphone sends the patient information directly to a trained doctor, it allows for referrals to happen swiftly, cutting down the time it usually takes. Also the smartphones are available for patients to rent in order to monitor their cardiovascular information.

Partnership Model

By leveraging a partnership model, Wireless Reach has been able to expand many services into rural or resource scarce areas by working with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. With the Wireless Heart Health project, Life Care Networks is a for-profit company that has a commercially available ECG monitoring service as well as products and services for personal care. They offer different levels of service, depending on the needs and desires of their clients. The other project partner, the Community Health Association of China, is a nonprofit organization that supports the efforts of the Ministry of Health in helping to strengthen the Community Health Clinics throughout China.

Wireless Reach’s partnership model does not only include bringing together for-profits and nonprofits to strategically work together. An important aspect of all Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach projects is that they tie directly to government policies and initiatives. For example, this project addresses one of the specific issues outlined in the recent 2009 Chinese Health Care Reform, which focuses on strengthening the country’s grassroots medical institutions to provide equitable health care for all citizens.By partnering with Community Health Association of China, Qualcomm is able to engage in a project that supports the Chinese government’s efforts to develop a primary health care system.

Sustainability and Scale

Another important aspect of Wireless Reach projects is the goal for them to sustain as well as reach scale. In some cases, the project and its products/services become commercialized. In other cases, they have been sustained by the relevant country’s government. Since this project is only months old, the long-term model has not been decided yet. But there is a plan to create sustainability in the short-term and answers the age old question of “who pays?” In the model, patients are charged a small fee to its patients to rent the specialized phone. This allows the clinics to generate revenue and creates incentives to actively use the products and services.

Current Results

As mentioned before, each of Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach projects are focused on reaching sustainability and increasing scale. For this project, Wireless Reach is focused on gathering information and creating best practices in order to keep the project sustainable and eventually scale up. New impact data has recently been received and ranges from September 2011 to the end of January.

46 community health clinic doctors have been trained on how to use the system.
A total of 1033 patients have participated in the project.
These patients have sent 2172 pieces ECG data.
Out of that data, 513 pieces were identified as abnormal.
Out of all of the patient participants, 208 were screened for serious cardiovascular conditions and referred to higher-level clinics for further evaluation and testing.

Wireless Heart Health is an interesting example of how creating strategic partnerships, utilizing current technology and infrastructure (both telecommunications and health), and tying the project goals to current government policies can create a sustainable and scalable mobile health model.

Please also find below a video of the project:

View More Qualcomm Videos

February 17, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How Design and Collaboration Can Improve mHealth

We have all seen or heard of an organization developing and implementing an innovative solution and then one or two months later the product is in the corner of the health clinic. It has not been used since the organization finished its initial training. While the outsiders who came in saw it as innovative, it clearly did not resonant as a solution to the users. But why? It seemed so obvious to the developers that this product would solve a glaring problem. Why wouldn’t these health workers want to use this application?

Photo Credit: Tecca

But not to worry. This is something that all organizations and companies deal with. Do you remember Windows Vista, Nokia’s N-Gage, and HP’s TouchPad? Well, each company would hope that you do not. There is an endless list of failed technology products and services. With the movement of leveraging high tech products in international development, especially in global health, failure has become a part of the dialogue in the sector. So much so that MobileActive began hosting FailFaire, where organizations utilizing technology in their projects can come and speak about their “failures.” The idea is to learn from mistakes that others have made. In the most recent FailFaire in New York, many of the stories were focused around design and collaboration issues. Not simply physical design issues (like there were too many buttons on the device), but multiple issues that the designers and implementers did not take into account.

While design has been on the forefront minds in the corporate world for many years (see iPhone and IDEO), design in the social sector is a relatively new idea. In order to decrease the number of failures, organizations have created partnerships with design firms. They are bringing user-centered design to the social sector. Below are some examples:

Reboot has worked with United Bank Limited (UBL) in Pakistan and the Gates Foundation to expand branchless banking via mobile phones.

IDEO.org is assisting Evotech in the further development of their low-cost endoscopy device. It is used during obstetric fistula procedures in developing countries.

Frog Design teamed with the Aricent Group, PopTech, iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, and Nokia Siemens to design programs to support HIV/AIDS patients as well as expand awareness and knowledge about the disease.

Design Strategy

By focusing on the human-centered design, the product/service takes into account the culture and needs of the targeted consumer. As the pioneer in human-centered design, IDEO wrote a paper in 2010 for the Stanford Social Innovation Review entitled “Design Thinking for Social Innovation.” In the paper, they discuss some of the issues with design in social projects. Along with looking into the culture and needs of the end-users, they mentioned that the project failed because the intervention had not been properly prototyped with the users and receive direct feedback from them. Human-centered design also sees a need to have the intervention fit into the infrastructure of the communities. The overall idea is to have the product/service that solves a problem that the user or community has. In order for this to occur, IDEO sees the solutions coming from focusing on those on the ground instead of the design process occur from outside the targeted community. Along with the design, they also believe that there must be a well thought out distribution and implementation strategy because that can kill a project too. Their most important strategy to the human-centered design process is observing people in their experiences and behaviors. This will tell the designers more than any survey because it can be difficult for people to explain what they need, especially if they do not know what that really is.

Collaboration

In order for the human-centered design to occur, there is a need for greater collaboration in mHealth. mHealth is a complex web of networks as it includes individuals from all areas affected in the sector – mobile operators, ministries of health, telecommunications regulators, community health workers, doctors, technology developers, global health NGOs, etc. As mentioned before, by understanding the problem and how a solution would be used in the field, the technology is more likely to be adopted. The creation process needs to understand all the aspects involved in the usage of the product/service. By creating a collaborating environment, no matter who the end user is (a mother, family, community health workers), the team has the experience and knowledge to look deeply into all the internal and external issues that are causing the problem. Once those are understood, then the group can start to see how the intervention can be both designed and implemented in the field with the end-user in mind. With this focus, there will be a clear incentive for the end-user to utilize the technology. Without understanding how a technology will improve their lives, there will be a low adoption rate. And then the technology becomes useless and another wasted investment.

The process of creating greater collaboration and utilizing a design strategy is easier said than done. Clearly money is an issue when including a design firm in the development of a mHealth product. It would be beneficial to include extra funds in budgets for the design process. The funds should be used to design the look, functionality, and business plan of the mHealth intervention as well as allow for greater collaboration. The end goal of developing a design strategy and increasing collaboration is to create products/services that will solve a problem but also that will be used by the indented users.

February 10, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

A Course on e-Health and m-Health: Using Information Technology to Improve Health in Low and Middle-Income Countries

E-HEALTH AND M-HEALTH:
USING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE HEALTH IN LOW AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES

Course URL: http://bit.ly/xo0DG9

International Health – online – Location: Internet

Course Instructors: Edward Bunker – Bill Weiss

Description:

Explores eHealth and mHealth in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). Students consider practical approaches to assess appropriate application of information and communication technologies to solve public health problems and improve health.

Students also identify and discuss challenges for developing and deploying eHealth and mHealth systems.

Through analysis of case studies and interactions with practitioners, students assess and articulate requirements for eHealth and mHealth systems.
Covers current topics and issues, including: “lessons-learned” from recent mobile health initiatives; challenges of creating, developing, and supporting systems within low-bandwidth or no-bandwidth environments; electronic health records (EHRs); role of mobile data collection within program monitoring and evaluation; and role and use of open source systems.

Although not exclusively, faculty and guest lecturers will draw upon their work and experiences related to HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Student Evaluation: Individual assignments (10%); Quizzes (10%); Exercises (10%) participation in group work and discussion (20%); two case study write-ups (30%); exploration of one emerging ICT, eHealth, or mHealth initiative (20%).

Learning Objective:

(1) articulate basic definitions and terms relevant to eHealth, mHealth, and Health Informatics;
(2) apply frameworks and other tools in the assessment and evaluation of eHealth and mHealth projects;
(3) consider how to elicit health-related needs and goals and determine if and how information technology can help meet those needs and goals;
(4) consider how information technology is or could be used to address health needs in LMIC;
(5) assist public health agencies and donors to develop or select information and communication technology to better solve problems and achieve objectives in LMIC;
(6) critically participate in discussions about basic system requirements for proposed systems by writing “Use Case” narratives and requirement statements;
(7) prepare Work Flow and/or Data Flow diagrams;
(8) identify the main drivers for the deployment of mHealth services in LMIC;
(9) describe and be familiar with the basic functions of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems and discuss the potential role an appropriately applied EHR System might play within an eHealth ecosystem;
(10) examine and describe a variety of current mHealth and eHealth initiatives; and
(11) critically discuss and debate current eHealth and mHealth issues, challenges, and opportunities.

February 7, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Best Practices in Creating and Maintaining mHealth Partnerships

During the most recent mHealth Working Group, Kelly Keisling, Co-Chair, passed out a publication of mHealth cases studies developed by GBC Health. Entitled “Building Partnerships that Work: Practical Learning on Partnering in mHealth” and created in collaboration with Dalberg Global Development Advisors and the mHealth Working Group, its goal is to provide best practices for future mHealth partnerships. GBC Health sees partnerships as playing a key role in expanding mHealth into the mainstream of global health.

Photo Credit: The University of Akron

The case studies focused on diverse set of organizations, ranging across multiple sectors – technology, NGOs, and multilateral institutions. Those included were the Carlos Slim Health Institute, Deloitte, HP, Intel, Nokia, Novartis, the Stop TB Partnership, UNICEF, USAID, and Vodafone. The research revealed overlapping topics and ideas that could be used to create sustainable partnerships for mHealth programs. Below is a list of best practices that the publication pulled from the case studies:

Partnership Selection

Shared Agenda and Vision: Look for partners whose vision is aligned with yours.

Organizational Capacity: Make sure that your prospective partner will be able to adequately support the initiative at all stages of relevant involvement – from development and implementation to scale-up.

Local Expertise: Work with partners who are already working in-country and possess relevant local expertise.

Complementary Assets: Identify partners who can bridge gaps in your organization’s expertise and knowledge.

Reputation and Integrity: Consider referrals from trusted partners to identify new partners with a good reputation in the market.

Structuring for Success

Clearly-Defined Problem and Solution: Solidify and remain transparent about objectives from the beginning of your conversations with potential partners.

Roles and Responsibilities: Ensure that each partner has unique core competencies to contribute.

Shared Value: Create shared value by ensuring a ‘win-win’ for all partners.

Leadership: Identify a “champion” in each of the partner organizations to lead the campaign within their organization.

National Priorities and Program: Align projects with government priorities at the outset to help with scale and rollout.

Community Involvement: Engage the end-users in the design and on-going feedback loop to continually refine the program.

Multi-stage Planning: Establish a clear and committed plan for funding, implementation and maintenance among partners, from the beginning.

Strict Project Management Process: Develop a structure project management plan with supporting documentation.

GBC Health is a worldwide coalition of over 200 companies and organizations focused on using their resources to improve global health. Dalberg Global Development Advisors is a strategic consulting firm that works to raise living standards in developing countries and address global challenges. mHealth Working Group is a collaborative forum composed of 150 global organizations and more than 500 individual, for sharing and synthesizing knowledge on mHealth.

February 2, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

mHealth Alliance to provide technical support for 8 innovative mHealth projects in 2012

Map with location of mHealth projects pinned

Last month at the third annual mHealth Summit held in Washington, D.C., the Innovation Working Group, part of the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child effort, and the mHealth Alliance announced the recipients of eight catalytic grants for mHealth programs. The grants, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), are designed to identify and foster innovative uses of mobile technology to advance maternal and newborn health, with a particular focus on supporting programs with sustainable financing models and early indications of health impact.

The eight mHealth projects receiving grants span from Africa to Southern Asia. They address such diverse issues as malnutrition on the small Tanzanian island of Zanzibar to childhood immunization drop-outs in Karachi, Pakistan. Each project has already demonstrated initial pilot level efficacy, and the grants will be used to take the programs to regional or national scale and make progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. A link to each of the 2011 Competition Winners’ websites can be found below.

The mHealth Alliance will work to provide the necessary resources and skills to support national scale-up processes and enable expanded reach to communities in need. Throughout the two-year grant period, the mHealth Alliance will provide technical support and establish opportunities for collaborative learning among the grantees, as well as facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships to further support long term impact and sustainability. “Each of the eight recipient initiatives has demonstrated innovative mobile technology solutions to obstacles in health and healthcare practices,” said Patty Mechael, Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance. “From providing maternal and newborn health information via mobile phones to building technology that supports clinical decision-making, these initiatives all focus [on] helping the world’s most vulnerable populations lead a healthier life.”

The next round of catalytic funding will be announced early this year. mHealth projects that have already demonstrated efficacy at pilot level and that have a viable plan for sustainability and scale are encouraged to submit applications. Check back with the HUB for application instructions and for monthly blog posts from the eight catalytic mHealth projects as they share their experiences going to scale.

2011 Competition Winners include:

Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)

Dimagi, Inc

D-tree International

Grameen Foundation

Interactive Research and Development (IRD)-Pakistan

Novartis Foundation

Rwanda Ministry of Health

Cell-Life

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

January 31, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Guide to Scale and Sustainability in mHealth: Moving Past Pilot Projects

A white paper release by the Advanced Development for Africa (ADA) last month laid out the necessary steps to scale mHealth projects in the developing world. Its goal was to provide governments, donors, and the private sector with the essential knowledge to push mHealth from pilot projects to scalable and sustainable solutions.

The report, entitled “Scaling Up Mobile Health: Elements Necessary for the Successful Scale Up of mHealth in Developing Countries” and authored by Jeannine Lemaire, preformed an extensive review of the sector. It focused on multiple case studies and pulled best practices and recommendations from organizations and thought leaders in the sector. With the current mHealth in a transition stage from proof of concept to widespread scale and adoption, there is a need to show key stakeholders that scale and sustainability is possible and necessary to improve health outcomes in the developing world. The ability to be sustainable and scale will push the sector forward and make the case for greater investment by governments, donors, and the private sector.

The author provided nine case studies including TulaSalud, TXTAlert, mPedigree, and ChildCount+. She also included the insights from thought learners in mHealth (David Aylward – Ashoka, Patricia Mechael – mHealth Alliance, Brooke Partridge – Vital Wave Consulting, Anne Roos-Weil – Pesinet, and Getachew Sahlu – WHO).

Photo Credit: IICD

Through the interviews and case studies, multiple best practices were established in order to properly implement a pilot with the ability to scale and be sustainable in the future. These best practices included the idea that sustainability and scale must be planed from the program’s inception, the necessity to perform a needs assessment for the local region, facilitating collaboration in order to avoid duplication, the inclusion of targeted users and beneficiaries during the development phase, getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders (governments, communities and local healthcare providers), collaborating with local implementation partners, creating partnerships with a focus on scale up, and including M&E to assess the impact off the interventions.

The research also provided recommendations at multiple levels of mHealth policy and development – programmatic, operational, policy, and global strategy. The recommendations were:

Programmatic:

Integrate the program within existing healthcare structures.
Employ an integrated solution and/or holistic approach rather than a silo single-solution approach. Identify innovative ways to incorporate other mobile services using cross-sectoral approaches.
Identify a sustainable and scalable business model that is applicable for large-scale implementations and can bring in valuable strategic partnerships to support scale up.
Build partnerships with the private sector after a successful pilot phase.

Operational:

Seek out and invest in building local capacity to minimize costs and support local ownership of the project.
The software and mHealth application should be geared towards the objectives of the program, suitable for local conditions and designed with the end-user in mind.
Identify what motivates the end-users, not just what the objectives of the program are. Use incentives to promote the consistent and effective use of the mHealth tool.
Perform social marketing.
Empower users through the mobile phone technology, particularly women.
If an area of the project is failing, fail quickly and publicly; adjust the program accordingly.

Policy:

Mainstream mHealth in the MOH and relevant government bodies.
Establish an e/mHealth structure to support the multi-sectoral mainstreaming of mHealth and advise the decision-makers on creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment for mHealth scale up.
Create an inter-ministerial working group and collective agreement involving stakeholders from the various ministries to support the scale up of mHealth programs.
Identify and promote the use of specific data, technology and interoperability standards.
Advocate for the integration of mHealth within local public and private healthcare initiatives; prioritize mHealth training for healthcare workers.

Global Strategy:

Establish a global network of key institutional players to inform an overall global approach to support the scale up of mHealth in developing countries.
Establish a global repository of mHealth applications, tools, best practices, recommendations and evaluation data. Institutional players must be willing to share and connect their existing repositories.
Create frameworks for success targeted towards informing policymakers, project designers and implementers, and donors.
Advocacy by institutional players to both internal and external stakeholders, particularly to donors, to utilize and integrate mHealth into programs in developing countries.
Donors and institutional players need to support the evaluation of initiatives in developing countries and the creation of common metrics, indicators and methodologies to evaluate impact on health outcomes.

The ADA is African-based nonprofit which focuses on scaling development in Africa through innovative solutions. This includes building capacity, transferring technology, hosting forums, and establishing cross sector partnerships. Jeannine Lemaire is the Director of eHealth and New Media at Actevis Consulting Group.

January 25, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Building While Operating: Lessons in linking mHealth and mobile money in Haiti

Last week marked two years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti that, according to the Haitian government, took the lives of 316,000 people[1], injured 300,000[2]and displaced at least one million people[3]– more than 10% of its population[4]. Any country’s infrastructure would struggle with this, but in Haiti even some of the smallest problems were exacerbated by the fact that Haiti was (and still is) the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere[5]. Many Haitians do have access to mobile phones, though, so mHealth and mobile money services have enormous potential to fill the gaps and improve their lives.

The earthquake left Haiti’s already weak health and financial systems in tatters. It destroyed 30 hospitals, 21 clinics, 11 Ministry of Health facilities, and 22 health training centers, and it damaged 30-40% of all bank branches and ATMs in the zone of impact. From the very beginning of the recovery, mobile services showed what they could do.

A great deal of mHealth activity took place to bolster the relief effort and safeguard reconstruction, including the Fletcher School /Ushahidi’s crisis mapping and proactive messages delivered via SMS to warn about cholera outbreaks through a partnership between Voila and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and more. In 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID launched a prize fund to accelerate the launch of mobile money services in Haiti, enabling the population to send, receive, and store money via mobile phones. In the time that has followed, NGOs eagerly adopted mobile money as a safe, speedy way to distribute aid and pay people in cash-for-work programs. In fact, of the 14 mobile money use programs in the world, eight are in Haiti. These programs are realizing a range of benefits – including improved speed, efficiency, and security.[6]

This early flurry of activity is now giving way to longer-term questions. With the prize mechanism nearing completion, providers of mobile money services are looking for ways to expand them in a profitable, self-sustaining way. Haiti’s health system is rebuilding, and administrators are deciding how much to bring stopgap mHealth applications into the mainstream. And the opportunity to combine mHealth and mobile money through insurance plans, voucher programs, and other innovative services is just starting to open up.

Making these processes easier and realizing the long-term benefits of mobile services will require addressing a series of barriers in the public and private sectors:

Strategy to move from prize-led launch to sustainable scale. Mobile operators and banks must now determine their strategies to reach the mass market and move beyond the prize-led launch to sustainable scale, avoiding the sub-scale trap which many deployments face globally. This will require the consortia to prioritize, penetrate, and capture profitable segments of the Haitian economy.
Interoperability and integration. The central bank in Haiti did mandate interoperability between mobile money services, but there is a continued need to integrate services, bridges, and open APIs – especially if mHealth and mobile money are to work together.
The policy environment. At present, the lack of a national ID scheme and policies for data security and privacy are holding back the development of mobile services, particularly combinations of mHealth and mobile money. E-wallets have been used to register people in Haiti in place of national IDs, but the e-wallets are currently capped at US$250 by the central bank, limiting the usefulness of mobile services.
The evidence base. Greater distillation and dissemination of the experiences of providers, users, and regulators would help the sector to develop in a more directed and way, avoiding repeated mistakes and redundancies.

Both the mHealth and mobile money ecosystems are at an inflection point in Haiti, and there is reason to be optimistic. Favorable regulatory approaches have led to the emergence of a spectrum of products, including payroll and merchant payments. For the sector to preserve its momentum, providers will have to find new ways to attract consumers, and policymakers will have to keep up with providers’ and consumers’ needs.

[1]One Year After Haiti’s Quake: Cholera Babies School Without Walls, ABC News, 12 January 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[2]“Haiti raises earthquake toll to 230,000”. AP. The Washington Post. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[3]“Haiti will not die, President Rene Preval insists”. BBC News. 12 February 2010. Retrieved 7 February 2012.

[4]“Earthquake Magnifies Haiti’s Economic and Health Challenges”. Population Reference Bureau. October 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[5] “UNICEF urgently appeals for aid for Haiti following devastating earthquake”, UNICEF, 12 January 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[6]Dalberg Global Development Advisors is currently conducting analysis for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the business case for, and operational learnings from, NGOs plugging into mobile money, forthcoming later this month.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

2012: The Year to Speech-enable Your Healthcare App and Give Mobile Clinicians a Voice

With continued growth in mobile device adoption across care teams, it is more important than ever for healthcare applications to support the needs of clinicians so mobility can be obtainable, process-driven and lead to rich collaboration. And with this comes the need for better data entry methods as mobile device adoption and clinical application usage increases in the medical community (it’s estimated that 85% of clinicians will own a smartphone by the end of 2012).

In an effort to support this trend, the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform, which offers secure, cloud-based, medical speech recognition services to healthcare ISVs and provider and payer organizations, was launched early last year. With this platform and its medical speech services, healthcare developers are able to voice-enable their apps using just a few lines of code.

To kick off 2012, Nuance Healthcare is challenging health care developers to give mobile clinicians a voice by speech-enabling their web-based and mobile apps using the Nuance Healthcare Development Platform—looking for the best implementation of speech recognition for the clinician on the go that enhances workflow and improves patient care.

The 2012 Mobile Clinician Voice Challenge opens Monday, January 2, 2012 at 9:00AM EST and closes Friday, February 3, 2012 at 5:00PM EST.

Watch a 60-second video describing the challenge at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4aGA7bmr7M

Take the challenge today and learn more at http://www.nuancehealthcare.com/2012mobilechallenge

January 4, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Public Health Informatics Certificate Training Program

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Public Health Informatics Certificate Training Program
Tuition Subsidies Available*

Application Deadline March 15, 2012

Public Health Workers in the Community Encouraged to Apply

Targeting public health professionals, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Nursing and the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC), is pleased to announce that the Public Health Informatics Training Program is accepting applications. This program results in a Maryland State-approved Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Public Health Informatics.

The goal of the program is to offer training in methods and concepts of health informatics and health information technology for application to public health. It is designed for current and future public health professionals who wish to develop expertise or specialization in this area. Courses for this program are available completely online. Individuals residing in the Mid-Atlantic region may also take selected courses on site.

The training program focuses on the following core informatics topics:

Overview of public health and biomedical informatics
Health information systems design and development
Health information technology standards and systems interoperability
Systems evaluation in health sciences informatics
Population health informatics

Electives are available in: Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support; GIS; Real-Time Surveillance; and “eHealth and mHealth.” The program culminates with a practicum, working on an approved public health informatics project.

Tuition Funding

Qualified applicants are eligible for a $10,000 tuition subsidy via a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), US Department of Health and Human Services. This subsidy is available on a competitive basis and with receipt of the award, the total tuition and fees that the student or employer will be required to pay to complete the certificate requirements is approximately $9,200. The ONC sponsored scholarship program is especially interested in applicants currently working within US public health agencies who wish to re-tool to specialize in public health informatics.

* Only US citizens or verified permanent residents are eligible for the ONC tuition subsidy. Those awarded the subsidy must complete all certificate requirements within 12 months. Priority for the tuition subsidy will be given to professionals currently employed in the public health field within the US or those intending to enter the domestic public health field. The tuition subsidy is not intended for those already working on a full time basis in the public health informatics field. All tuition subsidy awards are subject to ONC approval.

Applicants not eligible for the ONC funding can expect to pay approximately $19,200 to complete the certificate program and are permitted up to 24 months
to complete the certificate courses.

Certificate Application Eligibility

The certificate in Public Health Informatics is open to both current degree candidates at the Bloomberg School of Public Health as well as those with no School affiliation working in the field of public health who are seeking to move into the informatics field. Credits earned in the certificate program may be applied towards other Johns Hopkins degree programs – such as the MPH or informatics MS – if accepted into a program at a later date.

Eligibility requirement for the certificate include either: 1) an earned graduate degree in public health; or 2) current enrollment in graduate public health degree program; or 3) a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 3 years of direct public health experience.

The next cycle of training will commence in late August of 2012. The application deadline for entry into this cohort is March 15, 2012.

More information about the Public Health Informatics Certificate Training Program, including application forms and detailed instructions, can be found at:
http://www.jhsph.edu/dept/hpm/certificates/informatics

If, after carefully reviewing the program web site, you have further questions, please contact Ms. Pamela Davis, the program coordinator at pdavis@jhsph.edu or 410-614-1580.

As part of the Johns Hopkins University-wide health informatics training, two other programs (also with subsidies funded by the ONC) are available for medical, nursing, information technology, software engineers, and clinical management professionals without public health experience. These other programs are hosted at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Nursing. Information on these other programs for professionals without public health experience can be found at: http://www.jhu.edu/healthIT

Order:

December 22, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Inaugural meeting of the Technology Standards & Interoperability Working Group

The inaugural meeting of the mHealth Alliance’s Technology Standards & Interoperability Working Group was held on December 20th, 2011. There were 11 attendees representing varied groups including: donors, academics, implementers, clinicians and technology providers. A zip file is attached to this blog; it contains an audio recording of the meeting (with the chair’s thanks to Ricardo Leitao of Andago).

The (draft) mission of this new working group is to: Achieve alignment on and adoption of standards which support greater interoperability amongst mHealth deployments to ensure improved continuity of care, technology re-use, and cost effectiveness. The mHealth Alliance’s two key strategic focus areas for 2012 are: Evidence and Interoperability.This working group is intended to give effect to the latter.

There was helpful and insightful discussion regarding the ways both a “top down” and a “bottom up” approach can usefully inform the group’s activities — with examples given of each. As a “homework assignment”, group members will digest and comment on the two work items that are already posted to HUB, and will begin posting other artefacts (requirements docs, architecture diagrams, etc.) that provide informative examples from initiatives in the field. We will also start to catalogue a list of projects (especially open source examples, please) that illustrate “going to scale” with m/eHealth technologies in low resource settings.

I wish to thank the attendees for their active and helpful participation. I also hope that the audio recording will help others who were unable to make the scheduled time-slot to “join” and would welcome any and all comments (please post to this blog) they might like to add.

Our next meeting will be scheduled early in the new year. Between now and then, I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and all the best in 2012!

-Derek Ritz

Initiative:

mHealth Systems Integration

December 22, 2011/by actualize

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