HELINA '99: First Announcement and Call for Abstracts
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29 November - 1 December, 1999
Harare, Zimbabwe
The 3rd International Conference on Health Informatics in Africa
(HELINA '99) will take place in Harare, Zimbabwe from 29 November to 1
December, 1999.
The theme of the conference is:
"Health Informatics in Africa - At the millenium and beyond"
The Conference will be encouraged to review where Africa is now in
terms of health informatics, and where it might be going. It is in-
tended that participants will critically appraise the context of and
issues affecting the successful application of health informatics in
the Continent. It is hoped that questions such as who uses the technol-
ogy, who benefits, is the right type of information being collected and
processed, are the information systems appropriate, how to validate the
health information, and has the technology made a positive improvement
to the majority of people's lives will be raised and addressed.
The Conference will be organised into the following sessions:
- National Policies and Strategies
- Epidemiological Surveillance
- Decision Support Systems
- Storage and Retrieval
- Informatics Education: training in health informatics; use of infor-
matics in education and training
- Networking and Communication
- Hospital Information Systems
- Informatics for District and Primary Health Care Management
- Health Reforms: Decision-making and the role of health informatics.
SKILLS BUILDING WORKSHOPS
Two skills building workshops (A and B) will be offered following on
from the conference on 2nd and 3rd December, 1999. These workshops will
be:
A. Accessing MEDLINE through the INTERNET. Carrying out MEDLINE
searches through the INTERNET is a free service;
B. Setting up an INTERNET web site.
As places may be limited, participants should indicate whether they
wish to attend the workshops as early as possible.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Abstracts are invited for oral and poster presentations. Two types of
abstracts will be considered as follows:
Option 1:
This option is most suited for classical scientific studies. Abstracts
presented under the first option should contain concise statements of:
Background: the context of the study, reasons/justification for
undertaking the study;
Objectives: the study objectives, the hypotheses to be tested;
Methods: method(s) used or approach taken;
Results: specific results in summarised form;
Conclusions: discussion, implications, conclusions and applications.
Abstracts should disclose primary findings and avoid where possible
promissory statements such as "experiments are in progress" or "results
will be discussed".
Option 2:
The second option is more suited to presenting experiential information
about studies and observations, and policy development and analysis.
This option need not follow specified headings, but should include:
- an introductory statement summarising the issues addressed by the
abstract;
- a brief description of the project, programme, service, research or
advocacy;
- a description of the results of the project/programme, or crucial
issues/aspects to be considered;
- a summary of the lessons learned or conclusions from the project/
programme and their implications or applications.
Both types of abstracts should be between 300-400 words.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 31 March 1999.
Abstracts must be received by 31 March, 1999 to be considered for pres-
entation. In addition to the title, abstracts should contain the
name(s) and address(s) of the author(s), and their institutions, with
the presenting author's name underlined. Authors should indicate
whether they prefer an oral or poster presentation.
As the Organisers are concerned to have camera-ready copy to facilitate
the production of the conference proceedings and book of abstracts, ab-
stracts must be submitted in electronic form, through e-mail or on
diskette (3.5"). Word Perfect 5.1 or Word 6.0 (for DOS or Windows based
systems) or a generic/DOS word processing format is requested. Ab-
stracts for consideration should be sent to:
Dr.Douglas Ball,
Department of Pharmacy
University of Zimbabwe
P.O.Box MP167
Mount Pleasant
Harare, Zimbabwe
mailto:dball@healthnet.zw
The receipt of abstracts will be acknowledged. By the 31st May 1999,
authors will be informed about their abstract and invited to send the
full paper, (in electronic format), to be received by the Conference
Organisers by the end of August, 1999.
--
Dr Godfrey Woelk
mailto:gwoelk@healthnet.zw
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