AFRO-NETS> SHARED Information System on CD-ROM

SHARED Information System on CD-ROM
-----------------------------------

SHARED (Scientists for Health And REsearch for Development) started
in August 1996, as a bottom up initiative of a group of European and
African scientists, who proposed to the European Commission a Con-
certed Action to develop a co-ordinated approach for sharing essen-
tial information on Health Research and Development for Developing
Countries.

SHARED is all about more effective networking and co-ordination in
the field of International Health relevant to Developing Countries.
SHARED offers a meeting place on the Internet. Its databases are fed
with information about ongoing research and development projects in
the field of Tropical Public Health. It allows scientists and policy
makers to analyse and compare information, look at relevance, oppor-
tunities and gaps, find new partners and, in all, make better deci-
sions. SHARED has developed a participatory approach to the sharing
of essential public information, and making it available to everyone.

Focal Points are responsible for data entry and management and have
their 'own shelf' in the virtual SHARED library. SHARED has now de-
veloped the on-line (as well as off-line) technology to make decen-
tralised management of the databases possible and extremely user-
friendly. The system allows direct communication once relevant people
or organisations have been selected from the database.

In collaboration with SHARED, the Department of Medical Informatics
at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam has developed an Intelligent
Keyword Assignment (IKA) system. This tool will make it possible to
have texts analysed and (medical) keywords attached automatically.
The implications for text-retrieval, data-mining, electronic publish-
ing, and search engineering are enormous.

Apart from the technical structure, there is a fast growing interac-
tive network of National and Organisational Focal Points to feed and
maintain the quality of the databases.

SHARED has already strong interaction with major institutions and
initiatives in the field of International Health. Not only are many
of the SHARED partners policy makers in health themselves, but also
more and more international policy making institutions can use SHARED
as a central source of information.

For a hands-on experience of SHARED direct your browser to:

http://www.shared-global.org

Having in mind the difficult internet connection in Africa an off-
line version of the information system has been developed and is
available for free on CD-ROM. It allows searching for people, pro-
jects and institutions involved in Health Research for Development,
answering the question "Who is doing What and Where?"

New information can be added via the off-line data entry form and is
then automatically sent via e-mail (or manually via diskette) to the
central server and added to the information system.

If you would like to test the off-line version of SHARED on CD-ROM
sent your complete postal details to:

Sven Abrahamse
University of Cape Town, South Africa
mailto:sabraham@ICH.uct.ac.za

--
To send a message to AFRO-NETS, write to: afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe afro-nets OR unsubscribe afro-nets
To contact a person, send a message to: afro-nets-help@usa.healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.afronets.org