eHealth in Developing Countries

The Future of Health Care?

June 18th, 2001

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 

Organized by the Information Technologies Group at the Center for International Development within the Digital Nations Consortium

 

Participants

Bios

 
Gabriel Accascina
IT4dev

H. Thomas Aretz, MD

Harvard Medical International

Janice Brodman

Center for Innovative Technologies

Margaret A. D'Adamo, M.L.S.

Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs

Candy Day

Health Systems Trust

Edward F. Douglass

Health Communication Consultant

Timothy Dye

Center for Future Health, University of Rochester 

Hamish Fraser, M.B.ChB M.Sc. MRCP

Harvard Medical School

Lisa Garbus

HIV InSite

Jeffrey Gelfand

CIMIT International

Paul M. Gertman, M.D.

HEALTHvision

Julius Goepp

Center for Future Health, University of Rochester

Stephen M. Goldstein

Johns Hopkins Population Information Program

Magda Ismail

Center for International Development

Alex Jadad

Program in eHealth Innovation, University of Toronto

Nadya Karim-Shaw

Aga Khan Foundation USA

Vikram Sheel Kumar

Harvard Medical School

Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D.

Partners HealthCare Systems, Inc.

Holly Ladd

Satellife

Joel H. Lamstein

John Snow Inc.

Heidi Larson

UNICEF

Libby Levison

Partners In Health

Raj Malhotra

Spryance

Leela McCullough

Satellife

Paul Meyer

Voxiva, LLC

Ahmed Mohiuddin

Medical Center of Boston

Joseph Dal Molin

Minoru Development Corporation/Minoru Development SARL

Dennis Muscato

Hewlett Packard World e-Inclusion

Vinand Nantulya

Harvard School of Public Health

Rupal Patel

Columbia University

Alex (Sandy) Pentland

MIT Media Laboratory

Zeyneb Pervane

Harvard School of Public Health

Jeffrey Sachs

Center for International Development

Jay H. Sanders, M.D.

Global Telemedicine Group

Michael Scholtz

World Health Organization

Sara Sievers

Center for International Development

Laura Smeaton

Harvard School of Public Health

Amy Smith

Edgerton Center, MIT

John D. Spengler

Harvard School of Public Health

John West

Voxiva, LLC

Jim Wolff

Management Sciences for Health

Tim Wood

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

 

 

 


 

Gabriel Accascina is the director of IT4dev, an organisation specializing in the use of Information Technology to foster socio-economic development, an area in which he has been active since 1992. He previously served as Regional Coordinator of the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme assisting countries in the region in applying IT and Internet. Mr. Accascina managed his own consulting firm in IT and media in Silicon Valley from 1982 to 1991. Beginning in 1992, he worked in a number of developing countries in Africa, later concentrating mainly on the Asia-Pacific region, applying IT for development in a wide range of contexts, including education, technical assistance and public policies. Mr. Accascina has originated and implemented a number of initiatives, from the first public Internet connection in four countries, to the Network Academies Project in partnership with Cisco Systems, the Mobile Internet Unit, and the IT Development Project in East Timor. He holds a Masters degree in development communication and is a Fellow at Harvard University, Center for International Development. Mr. Accascina can be contacted at gabriel@it4dev.org 

H. Thomas Aretz, MD: By training I am a cardiovascular pathologist, still practicing as such for 20% of my time at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The remainder of my time I spend directing the Education Division of Harvard Medical International (HMI), a wholly owned, non-for-profit, independent subsidiary of Harvard University (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/hmi). Our areas of partnerships and consulting relationships are in Education, Quality Management, Health Care Systems Development and Strategic Planning. The Education efforts include primary, derivative and integrated e-learning approaches and the Health Care Systems Development includes IT solutions and communications. HMI is presently in 22 countries, including some developing nations.

Janice Brodman is Director of the Center for Innovative Technologies (CIT) at EDC, Inc., a nonprofit organization established by Harvard and MIT faculty. In this capacity, she is actively engaged in helping organizations worldwide expand successful use of training, information and communications technologies (ICT) to achieve their goals.  She has managed major, ground-breaking, complex projects in the US and developing countries. She is the author of a number of seminal works on the factors contributing to successful use of ICT, as well as a frequent speaker at business and other conferences. She has conducted numerous assignments in technology cooperation for a wide range of development agencies, including the United Nations, multilateral banks, USAID and country ministries. Dr. Brodman also worked with a major U.S. management consulting firm to develop ICT strategies for Fortune 500 corporations. She has developed and taught courses at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, on effective use of ICT by public sector organizations. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Margaret A. D'Adamo, M.L.S. has extensive experience in the field of special collections. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP), she was curator of a special collection of alternative journals and newspapers and editor of the Alternative Press Index. She is a certified media specialist and also has experience as an indexer, reference librarian and school librarian. She is fluent in French and conversant in Spanish. As Librarian for the Media/Materials Clearinghouse (M/MC), Ms. D'Adamo is responsible for providing access to M/MC resources via the web and CD-ROM. For the past ten years she has lead the M/MC's effort to collect, catalog and share its collection of over 40,000 health education materials from around the world. As co-chair of the USAID Reproductive Materials Working Group and past-president of APLIC-The Association of Population Libraries International, she networks with representatives of other organizations in the field of population and reproductive health. She has also worked with POPLINE and POPLINE Support Centers to provide training in Zambia, Morocco and Senegal.

Candy Day is a pharmacist who has been managing aspects of the HealthLink program of the Health Systems Trust since 1996. The focus of this work is using appropriate information and communication technology to improve health systems development, for example through supply and training in the use of email and developing locally applicable health information resources. She is currently completing a one-year medical informatics fellowship in Boston.

Edward F. Douglass is an independent health communication consultant. He has lived in Africa for 14 years, beginning with the Peace Corps in Cameroon in 1962. He completed his doctoral dissertation research in Sierra Leone in a year-long investigation of the potential role of the mass media to assist with economic and social development. His long-term assignments have taken him to Liberia for four years where he was a radio production trainer and advisor to the Liberian Rural Communications Network. From Liberia, he moved to Lesotho where for four years he was the Resident Advisor to the Health Education Division of the Ministry of Health under the auspices of the HEALTHCOM Project. His consulting assignments have taken him to Nigeria (communication strategy to combat river blindness), Zaire (radio "spot" production in support of childhood immunization), Swaziland (radio production training to combat infant growth stunting and to promote child spacing), Malawi (to evaluate a radio serial drama targeted to teenagers about HIV/AIDS), Egypt (communication strategy supporting household water filters and septic systems), Gaza (communication strategy to promote critical water use and sanitation behaviors in a large refugee camp), the Philippines (communication strategy to encourage protection of the marine and forest environments), Zambia (communication strategy for the prevention and treatment of malaria), and Eritrea (design and production of two year-long radio serial dramas in which the characters encounter and try to solve a variety of health problems).

Timothy Dye is Chief of the Division of Public Health Practice and Associate Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester. Both a medical anthropologist and epidemiologist by training, Dye concentrates on the blending of qualitative and quantitative methods in assessing local health needs and services. Dye's international work has focused upon the social epidemiology of maternal and child health and community health informatics in India, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Kenya, and Northern Ireland. Dye is the PI of an NIH-funded project to develop community health informatics training and research infrastructure in collaboration with the LINCOS project of Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, and also is PI of a CDC-funded English- and Spanish-language distance-learning program in maternal and child health epidemiology. Dye has served as a consultant to several states and countries in the development of perinatal information systems. Dye received a PhD in Anthropology and an MS in Epidemiology from the University of Buffalo, an MPA in Development Administration and an MA in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where he was a National Resource Fellow in Hindi and South Asian Studies.

Hamish Fraser is an Instructor at Boston Children's hospital and Director of Informatics and Telemedicine for the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. He is also a research Affiliate at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. His training is as a physician in general medicine and cardiology, predominantly from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and related hospitals in Scotland. He holds a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence/Knowledge Based Systems from Edinburgh University. He recently completed a three-year fellowship in medical informatics split between the MIT Clinical Decision Making Group and the Divisions of Clinical Decision Making and Cardiology at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston. The main project was designing and performing an evaluation of a computer program to assist with the diagnosis of heart disease. Dr Fraser is currently involved in projects to improve access to medical information in several developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa and also Brazil and Peru. He is helping to set up a masters degree program in medical and public health informatics in Durban, South Africa. A year ago he was appointed to head the informatics and telemedicine component of the Partner in Health project to treat multi-resistant TB in Peru. This large project, funded by the Gates Foundation, is providing medical care, investigation and medication for patients in Peru and parts of Russia. He is building systems for Web based clinical data management, teleradiology and drug supply management for this project. Other interests include security and confidentiality of medical data and evaluation of clinical information systems.

Lisa Garbus, MPP, is the policy and international editor of HIV InSite (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu), a web site based at the University of California San Francisco. HIV InSite provides medical, prevention, and policy information and analysis to an annual audience of 4 million health care providers, researchers, policymakers, and consumers from over 150 countries. The site receives over 3 million page-views each month. Ms. Garbus also serves as the project director of HIV InSite's AIDS Profile Project, funded by USAID. Prior to joining HIV InSite, she was a consultant to the World Bank's Africa Region; she coorganized the first Bank seminar on reproductive health and conflict situations and was a member of the team nominated for the 1999 President's Award for Excellence for her research on gender, poverty, and sexual & reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa. She served as a University of Michigan Population-Environment Fellow in Burkina Faso, creating and managing an initiative analyzing the linkages among reproductive health, environment, and demographic decisionmaking. She was also a consultant to the (then) Global AIDS Policy Coalition, for which she examined the UN's response to HIV/AIDS; her analysis subsequently became a chapter in AIDS in the World II. Ms. Garbus also worked for the (then) Harvard Institute for International Development on a capacity building project and for the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) in Indonesia, for which she elaborated an HIV prevention communications plan and formulated a contraceptive marketing strategy. Ms. Garbus holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She has authored or coauthored numerous articles on international HIV/AIDS and sexual & reproductive health policy.

Jeffrey Gelfand joined the Massachusetts General Hospital, Partners HealthCare System and Harvard Medical School as Senior Advisor for International Medical Affairs,Attending Physician, and Visiting Professor on 1 November 1999.He is also Director of CIMIT International(The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology) . Previously, he was Dean for Research at Tufts University School of Medicine and Senior Vice President for Research and Technology at the New England Medical Center. From 1994 to 1998, Dr. Gelfand was the Chairman of the Department of Medicine of Tufts University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at the New England Medical Center. He has developed therapies that are now standard treatments for several diseases .He has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards and citations. Dr. Gelfand has extensive clinical operations and managerial experience. He has been active in the international exchange of medical research, teaching, and patient care, and he has been a pioneer in applying modern telecommunications and computer technology to these purposes.

Paul M. Gertman, M.D. is a director and former chief scientist of HEALTHvision, a leading Internet health information company. Founded in 1999 by the Voluntary Hospitals of America, the Eclipsys Corporation and General Atlantic Partners, HEALTHvision operates public and private web site applications and services for more than 500 hospitals. Dr. Gertman also serves as the Chief Scientific Advisor on design of advanced clinical information systems for the Eclipsys Corporation, which provides health information systems for more than 1400 U.S. and international hospitals. Dr. Gertman’s principal scientific and business interests over the past twenty years have focused on the issues of measurement of quality and cost-effectiveness of care, on improvement of care for the chronically ill, and on the use of information to improve medical care delivery. In 1981, he founded the Health Data Institute, Inc. (HDI), which pioneered the development of health insurance claims database analysis and medical cost control systems, which were licensed by more than half of the top 50 Blue Cross and commercial health insurance organizations in the United States In 1985, Caremark Inc, acquired HDI and Dr. Gertman became its vice-chairman and chief scientist. Caremark was in turn acquired by Baxter International. In his most recent entrepreneurial venture, Dr. Gertman founded U.S. CareLink, one of the first eHealth companies, using the Internet to create an interactive system for the management of chronic disease. This firm was one of the initial entities acquired to form HEALTHvision In addition to his business activities, Dr Gertman holds an appointment as Professor of Public Health at Boston University and serves on the Johns Hopkins University Health Advisory Board.

Julius Goepp is the Director, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. He obtained a BA in Natural Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and the MD degree at the University of Maryland. He completed a Residency in Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital, Boston, and a Fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine there. In 1989 he began a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases with the Johns Hopkins University with research on the Haemophilus influenzae vaccine on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins in the Pediatric Emergency Department in 1990. Subsequently he has attempted to join an interest in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and in International Health by seeking ways to transfer knowledge and technology from the developing world to the industrialized world, especially in the care of children who live in poverty. Currently, his research and service concerns are with the use of lay health workers in the delivery of health care and health education among the families of urban poor children in Baltimore and Rochester, and with the role of technology in bridging the Digital Divide in health and health care access.

Stephen M. Goldstein is Managing Editor of the quarterly journal, Population Reports, published by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program. Mr. Goldstein, along with colleague Ms. Margaret D'Adamo, has coordinated three e-health conferences for USAID cooperating agencies (http://www.med.jhu.edu/ccp/2001.html). Mr. Goldstein has 20 years of experience writing, editing, and publishing print materials for dissemination to developing countries. He served as Managing Editor of Development International magazine and as Director of Publications for the Population Reference Bureau. In the early 1980s he was project director of AID Resources Report, a multi-sectoral, USAID-funded newsletter. His experience in journalism dates to the early 1970s and includes print, radio, and television news in the United States and in Israel, where he worked for the Associated Press as a news correspondent.

Magda Ismail is a Research Associate at ITG and a Visiting Scientist at the Media Lab, MIT. Prior to joining CID, she was Director of I.T. Programs at the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Ismail was also Assistant Manager of the Information Highway Unit at the Egyptian Cabinet of Ministers Information and Decision Support Center. She was a founding member and chair of the electronic commerce committee of the Internet Society of Egypt. Ismail has been one of the major players to catalyze the use of electronic commerce in Egypt and took part in writing Egypt's electronic commerce initiative. Her research interests focus on policy issues related to Internet and IT for developing nations. A graduate of computer science, Ismail received her master's degree in Analysis, Design, and Management of Information Systems from the London School of Economics.

Alex Jadad is a 37-year old Colombian-born physician, patient advocate, researcher and educator. In 1994, he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford (Balliol College), becoming one of the first physicians in the world with a doctorate in knowledge synthesis. In 1995, he moved to Canada and joined the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McMaster University, where he was Professor and Chief of the Health Information Research Unit and Director of the McMaster Evidence-based Practice Centre. In October 2000, he moved to Toronto. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of unique strategies to enhance the health system, through state-of-the-art technology, to help people access and use the knowledge and services they require to meet their health-related needs, regardless of who or where they are. In 1997, Dr. Jadad received a National Health Research Scholars Award, from Health Canada; in 1998 one of ‘Canada’s Top 40 Under 40’ awards, and in 1999 a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, in recognition for his efforts to improve our understanding of the role of knowledge and technology in health-related decisions. Dr. Jadad was recently featured in the Canadian edition of Time as one of the new Canadians most likely to change the country. Alex is married, with two children (and enjoys spending time with them more than anything else). He also likes to play the piano, and perform close-up card tricks (both at a basic level).

Nadya Karim-Shaw, Associate Program Officer, Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. Ms. Karim-Shaw received a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science and Geography from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to her work at AKF USA, Ms. Karim-Shaw was an analyst with Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group and has held positions as a system administrator, web-designer and developer at Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell. Since joining the Foundation in 1999, her responsibilities have included backstopping a multi-year grant for social development projects in Pakistan, implementing and maintaining the information technology infrastructure within AKF USA, and supporting the Foundation's efforts vis-a-vis ICT-related initiatives.

Vikram Sheel Kumar loped about the snow of NY until he was ten and quickly learning the value of shade from his new home in Delhi. He studied in local schools and attended the Indian Institute of Technology before returning to NY to pursue operations research at Columbia University. Currently a second year medical student in Harvard Medical School and MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Vikram is developing tools to improve patient compliance and flow of information with Professor Alex (Sandy) Pentland at the MIT Media Lab. Vikram is a Paul and Daisy Soros New American and a Yankee fan who lives too close to Fenway Park.

Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D. is a Harvard-trained Dermatologist whose involvement in telemedicine began in 1994 during research for its application to dermatology. In 1996, Dr. Kvedar was appointed Corporate Director of Telemedicine at Partners HealthCare Systems, Inc., the umbrella organization overseeing the affiliation of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School’s two oldest and largest teaching institutions. As Corporate Director of Telemedicine, he is responsible for the implementation of strategies for remote delivery of health care services by a variety of technologies within the integrated delivery system. Partners serves approximately 40% of the inhabitants of Eastern Massachusetts with an additional 10,000 international patient encounters annually. The goal of the telemedicine program is to extend the reach of Partners' 3,000 specialists globally by providing health care connectivity anytime, anywhere. As an Assistant Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School, he is involved in teaching and clinical practices at Massachusetts General Hospital and serves as Vice Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at Harvard medical School.

Holly Ladd is the Executive Director of SATELLIFE, a 12 year old health information provider to the developing world. As the Director of SATELLIFE she oversaw the development and implementation of the Regional Information Technology Training Centre in NAirobi, Kenya under the infoDev initiative of the World Bank and the revitalization of the HealthNet network. Ms Ladd previously served as the Executive Director of the Boston AIDS Consortium at the Harvard School of Public Health where she also worked closely with the late Dr. Jonathan Mann to established the Center for Health and Human Rights. Ms Ladd has extensive experience in the areas of HIV/AIDS policy and law. In addition she has recognized skills in strategic planning, organizational and program management, and the use of ICT to build knowledge networks. Ms. Ladd received her law degree in 1979 and has has practiced health and civil rights law in both government and private practice.

Joel H. Lamstein is President of John Snow Inc. as well as World Education. He is a Lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston University School of Public Health and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His teaches and consults in the areas of international development, management/leadership, non-profit management, information systems and strategic planning. He sits on the Dean's Committee at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. In addition, he is a Board member and Treasurer of the Global Health Council.

Heidi Larson, PhD, is Senior Communications Adviser at UNICEF Headquarters in New York and serves as Chair of the Advocacy and Communications Task Force for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). Previous to her current position, she was Senior Communications Adviser for the Stop TB Partnership hosted by the World Health Organization and was communications adviser to the five UN agency and five pharmaceutical initiative on Accelerating Access to HIV/AIDS Care. Dr. Larson has worked in international development since 1979, based in Asia and the South Pacific for over 10 years, designing communications strategies to address health issues, and developing ways to use communication technologies in research. She has published various articles on communications and health concerns, and has recently co-authored BEYOND 2000: Strategies for HIV/AIDS in the new milennium, published by WHO. She has a BA from Harvard and an MA and PhD from U.C. Berkeley .

Libby Levison: I hold a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing my degree I worked for two years in Malawi. For the first 18 months I was the Computer Advisor for the Central Medical Stores, where I focused on computerizing the drug management system. I also spent 6 months as the Computer Advisor for the Christian Hospital Association of Malawi, helping to develop and test a database to gather and analyze statistics on health services in the country. During the past year I have been running a research project at MIT developing a low-connectivity search engine for use in areas with poor Internet connectivity. In the past 6 months I have also been consulting at Partners In Health, where I focus on issues in computerizing the drug management systems. My principal interests are in appropriate uses of Information Technologies in the developing world and providing adequate infrastructure to ensure that those technologies continue to work.

Raj Malhotra is President and CEO of Spryance. He provides strategic leadership and operational guidance to Spryance’s entrepreneurial general management team. His role involves developing new business areas and relationships, conducting due diligence on acquisitions/joint ventures, evaluating technical architectures, building strategic customer alliances, recruiting key personnel, raising funds, and developing international operations. Prior to founding Spryance, he led a privately held business services company in Asia, and oversaw a 300% increase in profits within two years. Prior to that he held corporate development, strategy and technology management positions with Polaroid and DEC, managing platform investments for products contributing over $800 million in annual revenues. His roles at these companies included corporate development for cross-divisional programs, technology transfer, greenhouse ventures and international supply chain alliances. Raj is a respected e-business expert; he has co-authored e-business management games published by Prentice Hall and spoken on e-development at conferences at Harvard, MIT, and the World Bank. He graduated with a masters in management with highest honors from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University where he was a Beta Gamma Sigma scholar and received masters and bachelors degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University, with national honors.

Leela McCullough's education in the Biological Sciences (B.A.,Australia), science education (M.A., Canada) and curriculum development and teacher training (Ed.D., USA) form a solid foundation for her efforts to promote the use of IT tools in creating access to information for health practitioners in the developing world. She is currently Director of Information Services at SATELLIFE and is responsible for the development and implementation of a suite of electronic information services that serves subscribers in over 140 countries. Dr. McCullough played an integral role in establishing the Regional Information Technology Training Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, and was responsible for the development of the IT Basics curriculum, training the instructors, and leading the first training session for health practitioners. Born and raised in South Africa, Dr. McCullough has lived in India, Ethiopia, England, Australia, Canada, and the US.

Paul Meyer is co-founder and President of Voxiva, LLC, a social venture using voice-based technology to connect networks of health workers in the developing world. Previously, he was Founder and Chairman of IPKO, the first Internet service provider in Kosovo (www.ipko.org). Previously, as a Senior Fellow at the Markle Foundation, he launched a number of humanitarian technology projects in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. Prior to that, he was Chief Operating Officer of the Endeavor Initiative, a US-based venture catalyst supporting technology companies in Latin America. From 1993 to 1995, he served as one of President Clinton's White House speechwriters. He has a law degree from Yale Law School and studied Politics, Philosohpy and Economics at Oxford. Paul’s work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Wired, and Fast Company.

Ahmed Mohiuddin is Chairman, President and CEO of the Medical Center of Boston International, Medical Center of Boston and New England Heart Center. He established and founded the New England Heart Center, a comprehensive cardiac care center for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiac patients. The New England Heart Center has an established International reputation attracting patients from Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, India and Pakistan. The New England Heart Center has also established a reputation in South American countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and the Far East including the Philippines and Malaysia. In addition he holds several hospital appointments (Chief Emeritus, Section of Cardiology, New England Baptist Hospital; Consultant, Brigham & Women's Hospital and Staff Cardiologist, B.I. Deaconess Medical Center). Mohiuddin also serves as a Member of the Advisory Council at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University as well as being Chairman of Annual Fundraising at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Joseph Dal Molin is a principal of Minoru Development Corporation, and president of e-cology Corp. He has been active in developing and implementing open source based business strategies for healthcare since 1998. Joseph is co-founder and acting chair, of the Open Source Healthcare Alliance. Joseph has over twenty years of experience developing and implementing IT strategy in both the private and public sectors, twelve of them in healthcare. His public sector experience includes managing IT strategic planning for the province of Alberta’s Department of the Environment, Canada Post Corporation and the Workers’ Compensation Board of Ontario. He joined Digital Equipment Corporation in 1988 as a management consultant progressing to become director of DEC’s Canadian healthcare business. At DEC, Joseph played a key role in pioneering provincial and community health networks including Toronto’s HealthLink and the Saskatchewan SHIN. As part of the worldwide healthcare team he undertook assignments in Europe, and provided support to Australia and the US. He subsequently joined Stentor Inc., a joint venture of Canada’s telecommunication companies, as Vice President of Business Development, responsible for creating telehealth start-up companies. Recent work includes initiating the European Commission funded, SPIRIT open source health care portal; developing a sustainable strategy for the McMaster Univerisity Department of Family Medicine, open source primary care electronic health record; and developing plan create an open source laboratory system for the joint FAO/IAEA program of the UN. Joseph has a Bachelor of Environmental Studies, and Master of Arts in Regional Planning and Resource Development from the University of Waterloo. His graduate work, funded by the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment explored the use of quantitative ecology and integration of data bases to support environmental impact assessment.

Dennis Muscato, Hewlett Packard World e-Inclusion: In HP world e-inclusion, http://www.hp.com/go/we I am working to create the sustainable health partnership solutions in developing nations to improve the lives of the rural poor. I have been with HP for 20 years with experience in information technology for business development, marketing, project management, technical consulting, and delivery. I also work extensively with HP Philanthropy in community, K-12, community colleges, and university programs. I volunteer as an IT consultant on a USAID medical partnership led by my wife, Dr. Louise Muscato, that provides leadership in family medicine as well as creating a primary health care clinic, womens wellness center in concert with health promotion and health education activities in a urban and rural settings in the Ukraine.

Vinand Nantulya is a visiting Research Fellow in International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and until recently he was the Director of Programs at the Nairobi based African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), an international non-governmental health development agency. Dr. Nantulya is a physician, with several years of experience in basic science research. He has published extensively, in this area, original articles in peer-reviewed international scientific journals. Dr. Nantulya also has research interests in Public Health. His research interests in Public Health have focussed on health equity, communication of health information to communities, and health systems. He participated in the WHO/SIDA/Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Health Equity Initiative, leading two studies on health equity issues related to road traffic accidents in a developing country context (Kenya) and adolescent lives and livelihood in a developing country context (Tanzania). Both studies are published in a book entitled “Challenging Health Inequities: From Ethics to Action”, published by Oxford University Press. This book is to be launched the Rockefeller Foundation in May this year. He has served on several expert committees of the WHO and is he is a member of the executive committee of the International Federation of Tropical Medicine.

Rupal Patel, Ph.D.: I am an Assistant Professor at Teachers College Columbia University in the Department of Biobehavioral Studies. I also hold a visiting professor position at the MIT Media Laboratory and a Research Affiliate at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. My research is in the area of assistive technologies for communication enhancement. I am interested in eHealth issues as they pertain to access to technology particularly for disability groups, training of health professionals and consumers, and sustainable infrastructure.

Alex (Sandy) Pentland is Academic Head of the MIT Media Laboratory and Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. A pioneer in smart environments, wearable computers, and technology for developing countries, he is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world, and is a co-founder of several organizations within the IEEE Computer Society including the new Wearable Information Devices Technical Committee. He is a co-founder of the Media Laboratories' Digital Nations Consortium, of the award-winning LINCOS project, of the Center for Future Health. He has won numerous international awards in both the Arts and the Sciences. He was chosen by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the next century.

Zeyneb Pervane is currently a consultant at the Harvard AIDS Institute, Harvard School of Public Health. With a background in physics and work experience at BBN Technologies, first in Underwater Acoustics and then in Educational Technologies, Zeyneb moved to the Harvard AIDS Institute for an opportunity to use technologies to improve healthcare in resource-scarce settings. While there she has founded a technology team and driven the writing of technology infrastructure and communications systems into the Institute's grants and long term plans. She developed the KAIRE System, Knowledge management Applied to International Research and Education, and implemented it in Senegal, Thailand, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States. She has also built a network for a Senegalese laboratory, developed and delivered training packages, and tackled the limitations of overseas journal access, limited bandwidth, and language barriers. Zeyneb is currently spearheading the development of distance education technologies for the Botswana Harvard AIDS Care Training Program, scheduled to launch this summer.

Danilo Piaggesi has been Coordinator of the Information Technology for Development Division (ICT) at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. since 1999. As Coordinator of ICT, he is in charge of structuring and implementing the Bank's policy to introduce IT in the Bank's project portfolio, and is responsible for providing technical assistance to borrowing member countries. Prior to coming to the Bank, Mr. Piaggesi worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome (1981-1990), first as an Associate Expert at the Forestry Department at the UNDP/FAO detached to Morocco, later as a full staff member. He has been a member of the technical staff of TELESPAZIO, Societá per Azioni per le Comunicazioni Spaziali, TELECOM-Italia Group (1990-1998), and has also consulted for the European Union, evaluating project proposals for funding in the field of telecommunications and environment. Mr. Piaggesi holds a Masters degree in physics with a diploma in geophysics from the University of Rome (1980), and an Executive International Business Certificate from Georgetown University/John Cabot University, Washington, D.C.-Rome (1996). His professional training is in remote sensing applied to range and pasture management (1981); digital image processing and analysis (1986); technical cooperation project formulation and appraisal (1989); telecommunications (1995-1996).

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University. Sachs serves as an economic advisor to several governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Africa and Asia. Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors, and he is the author of more than a hundred scholarly articles and books, including Macroeconomics in the Global Economic (co-authored) and Poland’s Jump to the Market Economy. Sachs is currently the Chair of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health initiated by the World Health Organization. Sachs received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1976, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and 1980 respectively. He joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1980, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982 and Full Professor in 1983.

Jay H. Sanders, M.D. is President of The Global Telemedicine Group, Professor of Medicine (Adjunct) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, President Emeritus of the American Telemedicine Association, and Scientific Director of the NASA Medical Informatics and Technology Consortium. He is a consultant to Columbia University's Department of Medical Informatics as well as to their Center for Advanced Technology, represented the United States for Telemedicine to the G8 Nations for Health Secretary, Dona Shalala, and functions in a consulting role for the Air Force and the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Magna Cum Laude, he did his residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was Chief Medical Resident, and has been a Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the Medical College of Georgia, where he held the Eminent Scholar Chair in Telemedicine, and was Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Medicine. He has spent the majority of his professional career involved in teaching, patient care and research with special emphasis in the development and implementation of telecommunication and information technologies to address inequities in the provision of health care.

Michael Scholtz joined the World Health Organization (WHO) in July 1998 as Executive Director, Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for essential drugs, health informatics, drug policy and management, vaccination and health technology. As Special Representative of the Director-General, today he is WHO’s focal point for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with the World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization on public health and trade matters. He is project sponsor in the Director-General’s office overseeing the planning and implementation of the Health InterNetwork, a United Nations Millennium project. Dr Scholtz’s career has been in pharmaceutical marketing and management. At WHO, his private sector experience has helped the Organization in the complex field of health technology, drug development and in making new drugs available and affordable. He represented WHO during the formation of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and facilitated an agreement of Member States on the Revised Drug Strategy, a resolution of the 1999 World Health Assembly. Prior to his assignment with WHO Dr Scholtz was Vice-President & Director, Marketing Operations, SmithKline Beecham Biologicals. In this role he was responsible for strategic planning, sales in public and private market segments including supra-national agencies, medical information and business communication. He also supervised the formation of alliances with foreign companies and public vaccine manufacturers. Dr Scholtz began his career in 1976 in Ciba-Geigy, Germany where he held positions in sales, marketing and medical information with a cardiovascular products focus. In 1986 he was appointed International Products Manager and later named Group Head, Cardiovascular Products, in Ciba-Geigy’s Central Product Management, Basel, Switzerland. In 1991 Dr Scholtz relocated to Philadelphia, USA to join SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals as Vice-President & Director in Worldwide Strategy Product Development, with responsibility for cardiovascular and pulmonary products. Dr Scholtz was born in Hamburg, Germany. He received a Ph.D.(Dr. rer. Nat.) in Organic Chemistry from the Carolo-Wilhelmina University in Braunschweig, Germany.

Sara Sievers is Executive Director of CID. Ms. Sievers’ current activities include writing a book on the breakup of the Soviet Union from the republic perspective, collaboration with the World Bank as it conducts a survey of businesses in the developing world, and articles on competitiveness in Asia and Africa, financing medium-sized enterprises in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the business environment in Egypt as well as barriers to private sector growth in Southern Africa. She has spoken at a wide range of conferences, including numerous World Economic Forum events, seminars at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia universities, as well as meetings of the Global Coalition for Africa, the Africa Economic Research Consortium and conferences sponsored by the International Monetary Fund and the OECD.

Laura Smeaton is a senior biostatistician at the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research (CBAR) at Harvard School of Public Health. Her two majors projects are statistical support for various clinical trials in the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), and collaboration with HIV/AIDS clinical trials in Botswana through the Harvard AIDS Institute. Her interests in HIV research in Botswana include multi-trial and multi-centre database development, use of Internet technology in international collaborative trials, and training of local personnel in data management, biostatistics, and clinical trials.

Amy Smith was born in Lexington, MA and attended MIT as an undergraduate in the early 1980's. She worked in Botswana for 4 years with the US Peace Corps, teaching math, English and science at a community junior secondary school and then transferring to the Ministry of Agriculture to work as the Regional Beekeeping Officer. She returned to MIT to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering, focussing on engineering design for developing countries. She began the Designs for Developing Countries Project at MIT and has taught several seminars on redesigning medical equipment for use in remote clinics and field laboratories. She won the 1999 BFGoodrich Collegiate Inventor's Award and the 2000 MIT-Lemelson Student Prize for Invention based on her work in this field. She currently works at the Edgerton Center at MIT and has started a company that produces medical and laboratory equipment for developing countries.

John D. Spengler is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation, and Director of the Environmental Science and Engineering Program in the Department of Environmental Health, at Harvard University's School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. Prof. Spengler has conducted research in the areas of personal monitoring, air pollution health effects, aerosol characterization, indoor air pollution and air pollution meteorology, and has published extensively in the open literature in each of these areas. More recently, he has been involved in research that includes the integration of knowledge about indoor and outdoor air pollution as well as other risk factors into the design of housing, buildings and communities. Several new efforts are underway to investigate housing design and its effects on ventilation rates, building materials’ selection, energy consumption, and total environmental quality in homes. The tools of life-cycle analysis and risk assessment and activity-based costing are being used as indicators to measure the sustainable attributes of alternative designs, practices and community development. In addition, to his academic and research activities, Professor Spengler has been active in professional education workshops and short courses on topics which include pollution prevention and indoor environmental quality management for schools, offices and hospitals. He is co-editor of three books: Indoor Air Quality Handbook (McGraw-Hill, 2001); Particles in Our Air: Concentrations and Health Effects (distributed by Harvard University Press, 1996); and Indoor Air Pollution: A Health Perspective (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). He is on the editorial board of the journal Indoor Air.He serves an advisor to the World Health Organization on indoor air pollution, personal exposure and air pollution epidemiology, and he has served as either a member or consultant on various U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board committees. Dr. Spengler received a B.S. degree in physics (1966) from the University of Notre Dame, a Ph.D. degree in atmospheric sciences (1971) from the State University of New York-Albany, and a M.S. degree in environmental health sciences (1973) from Harvard University.

John West, Vice President of Product Development at Voxiva, LLC, has long experience in producing technology solutions appropriate to developing country environments. As chief technical officer for Out There News he built an online news network with correspondents in over 40 countries, including Cambodia, Iraq and Uganda, serving clients such as AOL Time Warner, the BBC and Virgin.Net. During the Kosovo crisis in 1999 he built Refugjat.org, a project which gathered refugee data from the field and posted it on a website connected to an Albanian language hotline, reuniting hundreds of Kosovar families, a service which was adopted by the International Committee of the Red Cross. A long-time journalist for Reuters, he was awarded Europe's first Internet Journalist of the Year award in 1999 for innovation in online media. A joint British and Irish national, he holds a degree in Classics from Oxford, a post baccalaureate diploma in Computer Science from Ars Digita University in Boston and speaks Arabic, French and Spanish.

James A. Wolff is currently a Senior Fellow for Electronic Communications at Management Sciences for Health. For the past twenty years he has been actively involved in assisting both public and private sector health organizations in countries throughout the world to improve their management. Dr. Wolff is an adjunct associate professor of International Health at Boston University School of Medicine and has been a consultant with USAID, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and a number of private organizations. He received a B.A. from Harvard College, a B.M.S. from Dartmouth Medical School, an M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a M.A.T. and M.P.H. from Harvard University. In addition to his management work and teaching, Dr. Wolff practices emergency medicine at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts.

Tim Wood is the Information Technology specialist for the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  He recently left Microsoft after 12 years of product development work which included building multiple versions of Microsoft Works, pioneering work on toys that interact with computers, and developing the Web sites sidewalk.com, MSN Yellow Pages, and HomeAdvisor.com.  He has been granted four patents for software and hardware concepts, and has a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.