E-drug: Conference / Workshops Announcement
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"The Internet and Telemedicine in African Health Care and Education"
Conference / Workshops Announcement
(Conference 19th-21st / Workshops 22nd-25th)
Location: University of Natal School of Medicine, Durban, South Africa
The New England Medical Center-Tufts University International
Training Program in Medical Informatics (ITMI) is pleased to announce
the first of a series of annual conferences and workshops covering
medical informatics topics of relevance to Africa.
The ITMI program is a new four-year program funded by the National
Institutes of Health (Fogarty International Center) in the USA involving
cooperation between seven institutions in the USA, South Africa and
Zambia. Training is open to all Africans. The program's aim is to
increase the medical informatics capacity of sub-Saharan Africa. A
fundamental part of this program will be the annual conferences and
workshops held in Africa. These events will address different
informatics topics of importance and practical use to Africans health
professionals and educators.
Why the Internet and Telemedicine?
In developing the ITMI program it has become apparent that the
Internet is an area of tremendous potential for African medical
education and health care. Although Internet access varies
considerably throughout Africa, the future will undoubtedly bring
increasing Internet connectivity.
Medical professionals and educators can see a day in which many of
the problems they face, such as access to up-to-date information,
providing services to remote clinics and hospitals, and providing
education to community-based medical students might be lessened by
the Internet.
Similarly any of the problems of providing health care to remote
populations may be lessened through the suitable adaptation of
telemedicine technologies.
Therefore this first such ITMI sponsored conference and workshops
will focus on introducing the concepts, demonstrating the
practicalities, and discussing the problems of adapting these two
related technological frontiers to interested African professionals and
others.
Co-sponsors and Speakers
This event is being co-sponsored with several African, US and
international institutions interested in furthering African health care
and education through technology. A multi-national faculty has been
recruited to address the conference and instruct in the workshops.
There will be two afternoons dedicated to telemedicine
demonstrations.
Who should attend?
The 3-days of conference followed by 3 days of workshop aims to
introduce African participants to how the Internet and telemedicine
can be used to meet some of the demands of African medical
education and public health. The following themes have been
identified for this meeting, 1) telemedicine, 2) medical education using
computerized materials / Internet technologies, and 3) the utilization of
existing Internet based medical information services. People who
should attend include:
a) health care professionals interested in developing telemedicine
services in their countries
b) African Medical School faculty, particularly those with an interest in
the role of computers in curriculum development and digital
educational materials and
c) medical school / hospital librarians. The organizers are particularly
interested in hearing from librarians as they represent high-impact
personnel / providers of information within medical and educational
institutions.
Workshops
I. "Using Existing Internet Medical Information Services and GetWeb"
This workshop is aimed at librarians and faculty who are interested in
learning how to efficiently access useful medical information on the
Internet. The workshop will focus on the systems developed by
SatelLife and HealthLink, two organizations to the forefront of medical
information dissemination. This workshop is ideal for participants from
institutions where computer availability and Internet access is either in
its infancy, or only available in a limited, even store-and-forward
format. A subset of librarians / faculty from the least "connected"
medical institutions will be able to collect donated computers to bring
to their home institutions. It is of one-day duration.
II. "Developing materials for computer-based learning and
computerized curricula "
This workshop is aimed at medical faculty / librarians who are
interested in developing computer-based learning programs. The
specific content of these workshops will depend on the ITMI faculty's
assessment of the participants based on the pre-workshop surveys. It
will last 3 days.
Registration
For Conference only: All conference participants must register. This
can be done on the World Wide Web (www.nemc.org/itmi), or by
email, fax or mail. For Conference and Workshops: all participants
must complete a pre-workshop survey that acts as a registration form
and will assist the organizers in developing the workshop content.
These surveys can be completed online (www.nemc.org/itmi) or by
email, fax and mail.
Further Information
Further details on all aspects of this event are available on the Internet
at www.nemc.org/itmi. If you do not have Internet access you can
request registration forms, surveys, and further information (e.g.
housing, financial assistance) be faxed, mailed or emailed to you by
contacting:
ITMI Conference Office
Debbie Petersen
University of Natal, Faculty of Medicine
Private Bag 7
Congella, 4013
Tel: 27 31 260 4327
Fax: 27 31 260 4401
E-mail: petersen@MED.UND.AC.ZA
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