Tag: ehealth

• Sep 16, 2010

  Going Digital: Taking the Maternal Health Community Online

  This blog was originally published on the Maternal Health Taskforce blog . It examines the role of technology in changing the realities of global health care and offers a great wrap-up of the 2010 Global Maternal Health Conference in Delhi. The Global Maternal Health Conference has ended—and ended with a bang. The “Maternal health: digital” panel closed the conference with exciting, new, and innovative ways for using technology for global health and maternal health issues. Advances in tools for cross-media storytelling, social networking, digital games, real-time messaging, and mobile and location-aware technologies are being adapted to fit the needs of the maternal health community—and are helping to fuel the increased momentum around the issue. Here are some of the highlights, but watch the full session to get all the details: Subhi Quraishi, at ZMQ Software Systems , talked about using mobile gaming for edutainment, for awareness-raising, and for care support and treatment. Many of us know about using mobile technology for health information, i.e., setting an SMS alert for prenatal and postnatal care for rural women that says,... Read More »

  Posted by Janna Oberdorf at 0 Comments

• Jan 6, 2010

  Global Health and Open Source in Africa—Why Is It Important?

  The term open source refers to software source materials or source codes made freely and openly available with permission to be redistributed, customized, repurposed and rebuilt, legally and most often without fees—as opposed to proprietary software where the codes are kept private, must be bought, and usually cannot be significantly modified by the user. Here’s a good definition from the Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd IntraHealth is an avid supporter of open source systems because we have found that they encourage collaboration, transparency and efficiency, while investing money into local capacity-building instead of software licenses.  Open source allows for collaborative creativity as well as localized customization, and adaptation, while promoting independence and local enterprise.  Even better, when significant contributions are made they can be shared openly and easily with others. According to independent market research , more than half of the world’s largest companies have implemented, are piloting, or are expanding their use of open source computing other studies put the number at 85% with continued... Read More »

  Posted by Heather LaGarde and Dykki Settle at 6 Comments