The Swiss Centre for International Health (SCIH) of the Swiss Tropical Institute (STI) is organizing its annual spring symposium. This time we will be focusing on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their impact on health systems development.
The potential of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a means to achieve development goals has received great attention in both the international literature and the media; and there is a widely held consensus that the possibilities are still emerging. This is also
apparent through the resonance the topic creates in international conferences e.g. the “World Summit on the Information Society“ in Geneva and Tunis or the “Geneva Forum on ICT” in 2006. The ICT agenda for global health places particularly high expectations upon electronic medias and
the efforts being made by WHO in the frame of the Global Observatory for eHealth.
The symposium offers a platform for the exchange of experiences and lessons learned and for taking a closer look at practical examples from field settings around the world. More specifically, we will be addressing the following questions:
Where have successful initiatives taken us? At what level? What can we already learn from these experiences?
What solutions have been successfully implemented? What are the hurdles and the recommendations on how to overcome them?
What are the upcoming trends, which policy changes might we expect?
Potential and limits of ICT in health systems development. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
The following topics will be considered in the thematic field “ICT and Health“:
Telemedicine and eHealth
Health Management Information Systems
Knowledge Management and eLearning
Invited speakers and experts from the Institute will discuss these questions and will provide the latest available information on progress at local, national and international level, as well as experiences from field work. To insure a riche debate, we are inviting speakers from the North
and the South, from multilateral and bilateral agencies, from large and small NGOs.
We sincerely hope this symposium will interest you and are looking forward to welcoming you here in Basel.
Kind regards.
Nick Lorenz, Martin Raab
Swiss Centre for International Health
Key information
April 22nd 2008, Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, Switzerland
All day event from 9:30 to 17:00
Lunch will be offered to registered participants
Participation is free of charge
The symposium will be conducted in English
No simultaneous translation will be available
Number of participants is limited
To the registration form: http://www.sti.ch/about-us/events.html
