IST-Africa shared results during Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, 20 - 22 October 2017

23 October 2017

Paul Cunningham, IIMC/ IST-Africa shared ongoing results and experiences from the IST-Africa Initiative during the IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, from 20 - 22 October 2017.

IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) is a cross-disciplinary annual conference focused on advancing technology for the benefit of humanity in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. GHTC brings together stakeholders from the public, private, education and research and societal (not-for-profit) sectors to address the critical issues for the benefit of the resource-constrained and vulnerable populations in the world.

During the IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee (HAC) Public Workshop focused on Global Development on 20 October, Paul Cunningham presented the Role of Collaborative Open Innovation / Co-Designing a Development Project.

This highly participatory workshop, which leveraged results from IST-Africa, focused on providing an opportunity for all key stakeholders involved in or interested in getting involved in global development to share insight, discuss the co-design of development projects and brainstorm. Topics discussed included:

- Potential Role of Collaborative Open Innovation

- Designing an ethical Development Project

- Monitoring & Evaluation and Impact Assessment

This session was very interactive incorporating group work so the participants could get input on how to incorporate co-design principles into project generation from the conceptual starting point throughout the project life cycle. The participants found the very practical examples from IST-Africa experiences to be very valuable. The session was very well attended with participants from a range of countries.

mHealth4Afrika presented results from the alpha validation in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa in Session C1: mHealth on 20 October. This was very well received.

On 21 October Paul Cunningham organised and moderated a plenary panel on "Healthcare in Developing Countries" leveraging experiences from both IST-Africa and mHealth4Afrika. Panelists included:

- Anurag Mairal, Director of Global Outreach Programs, Byers Center for Biodesign, Stanford University

- Khanjan Mehta, Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry, Lehigh University

- Praveen Raja, Vice President for Technology Development and Introduction, PATH

- Akos Somoskovi, Respiratory Medicine Lead, Global Health Technologies, Global Good Fund, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory

The panel discussed the role of multi-stakeholder collaboration and open innovation with Health programs, examples of innovative eHealth/mHealth projects in developing country contexts and some of the key innovations that are likely to make a significant impact on primary healthcare delivery over the coming years. The knowledge sharing during this panel was very well received among the 200 plus participants.