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Feb 1, 2010

Mobile Health Needs And Opportunities In Developing Countries

Subjects: mHealth
Countries: Global

Developing countries face steady growth in the prevalence of chronic diseases, along with a continued burden from communicable diseases. “Mobile” health, or m-health—the use of mobile technologies such as cellular phones to support public health and clinical care—offers promise in responding to both types of disease burdens. Mobile technologies are widely available and can play an important role in health care at the regional, community, and individual levels. We examine various m-health applications and define the risks and benefits of each. We find positive examples but little solid evaluation of clinical or economic performance, which highlights the need for such evaluation.

Jan 13, 2010

Editorial- successes and challenges in global immunization efforts

Subjects: GAVI, Unicef, WHO
Countries: Global

Editorial

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Jan 11, 2010

Global Observatory for eHealth series – Volume 1

Subjects: eHealth, eHealth architecture, eHealth Plan, mHealth, WHO
Countries: Global

This publication presents data on the 114 WHO Member States that participated in the 2009 global survey on eHealth. Intended as a reference to the state of eHealth development in Member States, the publication highlights selected indicators in the form of country profiles. The objectives of the country profiles are to: 1.) Describe the current status of the use of ICT for health in Member States; and 2.) Provide information concerning the progress of eHealth applications in these countries.

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Nov 8, 2009

Integrating Fingerprint Verification into the Smart Card-Based Healthcare Information System

Subjects: Applications, eHealth, EPI Plan, Patient De-Identification
Countries: Global

As VLSI technology has been improved, a smart card employing 32-bit processors has been released, and more personal information such as medical, financial data can be stored in the card. Thus, it becomes important to protect personal information stored in the card. Verification of the card holder's identity using a fingerprint has advantages over the present practices of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and passwords. However, the computational workload of fingerprint verification is much heavier than that of the typical PIN-based solution. In this paper, we consider three strategies to implement fingerprint verification in a smart card environment and how to distribute the modules of fingerprint verification between the smart card and the card reader. We first evaluate the number of instructions of each step of a typical fingerprint verification algorithm, and estimate the execution time of several cryptographic algorithms to guarantee the security/privacy of the fingerprint data transmitted in the smart card with the client-server environment. Based on the evaluation results, we analyze each scenario with respect to the security level and the real-time execution requirements in order to implement fingerprint verification in the smart card with the client-server environment.

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Oct 30, 2009

Information Technology for Health in Developing Countries

Subjects: Applications, eHealth Plan, Telecommunications, Training
Countries: Global

Poverty has deepened the crisis in health-care delivery in developing countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, which is a region facing a disease burden that is unmatched in the world. Whether access to proven and powerful information and communication technologies (ICTs) can improve health indicators is an ongoing debate. However, this brief review shows that in the last decade there has been significant growth in Internet access in urban areas; health-care workers now use it for communication, access to relevant health-care information, and international collaboration. The central message learned during this period about the application of ICTs is that infrastructural and cultural contexts vary and require different models and approaches. Thus, to harness the full potential of ICTs to the benefit of health systems, health workers, and patients will demand an intricate mix of old and new technologies.

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Oct 26, 2009

First Experiences in Implementation of Biometric Technology to Link Data From Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems with Health Facility Data

Subjects: Data Warehouse, eHealth, eHealth architecture, Immunization Registry, openMRS, Software
Countries: Global

In developing countries, Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSSs) provide a framework for tracking demographic and health dynamics over time in a defined geographical area. Many HDSSs co-exist with facility-based data sources in the form of Health Management Information Systems (HMIS). Integrating both data sources through reliable record linkage could provide both numerator and denominator populations to estimate disease prevalence and incidence rates in the population and enable determination of accurate health service coverage.

 

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Sep 1, 2009

Progress towards immunization -winning the fight against deadly diseases

Subjects: EPI Plan
Countries: Global

The prevention of childhood diseases through increased access to immunizations is one of the greatest success stories in global public health. Millions of children’s lives have been saved—at least 20 million over the past two decades—and the number of diseases that can be prevented using vaccine technologies has continued to increase.

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Aug 26, 2009

Assessment of the quality of immunization data produced by the national individual registration system in Uruguay, 2006

Subjects: Immunization Registry, Policies, Practices
Countries: Uruguay

The nominal registration system of Uruguay's national immunization program (NIP) tracks administered vaccines on a paper form filled out after each vaccination and collated into a national database, thus allowing for individual follow-up. This study performed a comprehensive assessment of the quality of Uruguay's immunization data in November 2006 to evaluate the validity of the information and to confirm the high national immunization coverage reported by the program

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Aug 24, 2009

Madagascar eHealth WHO Report

Subjects: eHealth, eHealth architecture, mHealth, WHO
Countries: Madagascar

eHealth foundation actions build an enabling environment for the use of ICT for health. These include supportive eHealth policy, legal and ethical frameworks; adequate funding from various sources; infrastructure development; and developing the capacity of the health work force through training. eHealth applications surveyed in 2009 include telemedicine (the delivery of health care services using ICT where distance is a barrier to care); mHealth (the use of mobile devices in delivering health care services); and eLearning (use of ICT for learning).

 

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