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 People and communities around the world find it difficult to access good, affordable health care and knowledge they can use to improve their health. How can the global health community use technologies successfully to address the needs that matter most, such as getting the right health workers with the right skills and the right tools to the right communities, improving health, and saving lives?
Advancing technology - particularly information and communication technology (ICT) - has been the hallmark of this new millennium. A message that once took two weeks by mail now takes mere seconds. A phone transmits not only voices, but music, text and video, evolving into one of the most important tools for social media, education and action. The evolving economies of technology - smarter phones, smaller and cheaper laptops - has allowed for more facile and cost-effective ways to share information, provide training and mobilize constituents instantly. Certainly, the global health community has taken advantage of and thus benefited tremendously from these developments in increasing access and providing better services to a broader audience. In short, ICT has and will continue to change the way we do business.
Great strides have also been achieved in advancing the tools for providing better health around the world. From diagnostic tests to new vaccines, the products of public health have become more sophisticated - in both developed and developing countries - making it faster, more precise, more accurate and less expensive to prevent, control and treat public health threats, particularly those caused by communicable diseases. Much of this work is being done through the private sector - big and small, North and South, NGOs and corporations - and through public-private partnerships and global development alliances. The combination of improved communications, enhanced health products, and an ever-increasing range of players and partners provides for a stronger, better way of providing health services.
But improved technologies do not, in and of themselves, provide better health. They are a tool to achieving an end, and they must be used intelligently and in tandem with proven strategies for creating demand, addressing the crisis in human resources for health, providing health-care services, increasing access to and improving quality of care, and ensuring availability. And in some cases, technologies make us rethink the way we do things, creating new strategies as a result of technology.
With progress often comes the ever-growing chasm that is the disparity between rich and poor, urban and rural, women and men. The onus, therefore, remains to provide more equitable access to an availability of quality services.
The Global Health Council’s 36th Annual Conference, New Technologies + Proven Strategies = Healthy Communities, will highlight the ways in which technologies in combination with best practices and evidence-based policies improve health around the world.
Effect on Communities
How have communities used or benefited from new technologies?
What are the new ways in which 21st century tools can be used to enhance connections between service deliverers and needs of community?
How do we balance achieving scale on one hand and locally appropriate solutions on the other?
Technologies
What are some of the technological advancements that improve health? Are these advancements reaching the people and communities who need them?
- Information and communication technology (computer systems, software and hardware, Internet-based tools, mobile phones, PDAs)
- Pharmaceuticals (drugs & vaccines)
- Over-the-counter medications/supplements; ayurvedic drugs
- Medical devices/tools
On the flip side, what are some technologies that have failed?
What are particular pitfalls to watch for, and how might they be addressed properly?
What are contributing factors to support the success of technology-based interventions (e.g., how do we avoid computers being stacked unused in closets, or left un-supported and un-working)?
What are some cases in which "low-tech" alternatives have worked better?
How can ICT accelerate simple, known technologies?
Health Systems Strengthening
How is technology currently being used to address human resources for health gaps and challenges?
What promising technology practices are coming online or just over the horizon?
What are some best practices to ease technology's burden on the inadequately staffed and trained health workforce?
What are the challenges and opportunities for building capacity in eHealth - the use of ICT to improve health systems performance?
What are the best strategies and technologies for fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making?
Prevention
What technological innovations enhance prevention strategies?
For example:
- improved cook stoves for reduced exposure to indoor air pollution
- point-of-use water treatment and storage systems
- nutritional innovations with improved micronutrient content
- long-lasting insecticide-treated nets for malaria
- contraceptive methods
- HIV prevention technologies
Equity
How are new technologies, used appropriately, more cost-effective ways to improve health?
How does it achieve the goal of necessary technology at low cost?
How do we ensure access to technologies and strategies that we know work?
How do we ensure that the latest advancements are equitably distributed?
How do we get available technologies from those who produce them to those who need them, especially prevention technologies like bednets?
How do we create an infrastructure for delivery and distribution of new technologies?
What partnerships among the various actors in global health need to be created to accelerate the process?
How can we accelerate the dissemination of innovations and discoveries?
What have we learned from the introduction of proven technologies and strategies that will speed up the utilization of new or underutilized technologies and strategies?
Education, Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration
What are the best technologies for providing access to information, and for sharing knowledge effectively (e.g., avoiding "information overload")?
How can we best harness the potential of cell phones and other mobile technologies (e.g., for supporting health workers, peer-group support, m-learning, promoting care-seeking, sharing health information)?
How are social media used to improve health and development?
- To communicate/collaborate
- To disseminate information & facilitate knowledge sharing
- To train health-care workers
- To build capacity, including facilitating organizational operations
- To collect data for assessment and monitoring of programs/interventions
- To promote social franchising
- To advocate
How do we maintain quality and reliability of information while still moving toward a new modality for engagement and conversation?
Building Leadership and Partnerships
What are some proven strategies, such as community know-how and buy-in/ownership, that have been used effectively to improve health?
What is the role of local players (small NGOs, governments, companies, academic institutions from the “South”) who make innovation happen on a local level?
What is the role of the private sector – big and small NGOs and companies, in the North and the South – in developing, manufacturing and distributing technologies and in providing health-care services?
How have public-private partnerships and global development alliances contributed to the development and distribution of technologies and proven strategies?
How can we increase the involvement of developing country governments and multi-lateral institutions in technology initiatives?
How do we balance scientific and technical aspects of technology in global health with social, cultural, political, and economic factors?
Building Capacity and Sustainability
What are the best approaches for funding technological development?
What are the best approaches for funding the distribution of technologies?
How do market-based models compare with donor-based models?
What are the best approaches for building and sustaining human capacity to use, modify and maintain technologies?
Maximizing Impact
How do we properly measure and evaluate the health impacts of new technology so we know what works and what doesn't?
How is technology being appropriately used to maximize its impact on health? For example, in building the capacity of health workers or the innovative services that are provided using social media.
What are the ways that 21st century tools, information, and technologies can accelerate access to innovations and proven strategies?
Results
How do we use new technologies to enhance monitoring and evaluation?
What are the outcomes and results of using new technologies and strategies? Do they truly benefit health?
What is the role of the community in achieving positive health outcomes?
What are the successes and challenges to reach the “out of reach” population and the poor?
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