Global Health eInfrastructures
The Global Health eInfrastructures project, funded by the VERDIKT program, is running from 2009 to 2013. The project lead is Jørn Braa.
Below is a little abstract, taken from the research proposal.
Global health e-infrastructures: integration and use of information
The research project Global Health eInfrastructures (GHeI) is proposed through a cross-disciplinary international consortium comprising of researchers, users (of health information) organizations, and groups representing providers of infrastructure. GHeI addresses key challenges to society by contributing towards improved health services provision in developing countries - but with relevance to Norway - through enhanced access and use of health information.
The currently fragmented (un-integrated) and uncoordinated health information systems, however, represent major obstacles to adequate health services.The key analytic aims addressed in SIGH are grounded in VERDIKT's overall interdisciplinary call on "communicating organisations" and "seamless infrastructures"; to facilitate interaction across levels, geography, services and professions in health care through developing and using interoperable infrastructures, thereby enabling increased organisational communication and integration of health services provision.
The principal aim of SIGH is that of conceptualising - and subsequently intervening - in the fragmented (i.e. non-integrated) information systems in health care, typified by large scale fragmented, technical and institutional, systems. The broad er aim is to maximize the societal impact of such ICTs in health care by intervening in key health problem areas such as maternal and child health.Building on an ongoing, long-term project (called HISP) operating in many African and Asian countries, GHe I aims at extending HISP by establishing laboratories for heterogeneous health information infrastructures and open source software at WHO, Geneva, and in Norway, as well as pilot sites in Norway, India and Tanzania. Methodologically, our research approach is action-oriented and interpretative.