While eHealth systems are being developed with tremendous momentum and innovation, severe inefficiencies exist. There is substantial duplication of effort, and inadequate evaluation and feedback on eHealth solutions. It is difficult and expensive for potential implementers to learn about and assess whether any of the many existing (or pipeline) solutions may be helpful, even though wrong choices can drain resources and have negligible effects on health impacts. Organizations and institutions working in the health and development sector have a difficult time finding and assessing the utility of a particular software solution and/or tool and determining how mature, useable, or scalable it may be.
Bridging the gap
eHealth.OurExchange.org is a dynamic, collaborative, user-friendly website that enables eHealth solution developers and development field workers to share their experiences. The goal is to help reduce duplication of effort, and allow potential implementers to learn about and assess whether existing solutions may be helpful to reach a specific health impact goal. This site can serve these various user groups in a variety of ways: software developers describing their technologies in detail and getting feedback on how to improve them; Ministry of Health officials, health care providers and fieldworkers in international development publishing and extracting “lessons learned” from others in similar positions; and funding agencies and program managers assessing risks and rewards of investing in various kinds of solutions.
Website status
Based on growing interest and enthusiasm from members of the eHealth community, a small core launch group has been working for the last two months to launch a prototype of the site in time for the Public Health Informatics 2008 Conference. Representatives of 20+ organizations, academic institutions, private companies and multinational agencies have agreed to contribute or solicit content to the website by the end of 2008.
Esther Nasikye from ChangeWaves will be joining this group from October to help generate technology reviews from users and populae teh website.
Why duplicate efforts, if you know any ehealth software taht you would like to review as a developer or use, contact me at esther@changewaves.org
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