INDICES> Conference announcement (long message)

[Leela McCullough <leela@usa.healthnet.org>]

"The Internet and Telemedicine in African Health Care and Education":

Conference / Workshops Announcement
Date: July 19th- 25th, 1999
(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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