On Saturday, May 1st the Harvard Kennedy School, in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School, is hosting the 2010 Global Public Health & Technology Conference themed, “Moving Beyond the Technology.”  A brief description of the conference follows:

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have the potential to transform health delivery throughout the world, whether through the use of electronic health records to manage HIV/AIDS care in rural Uganda or mobile devices providing community health workers with decision support  in the field. Too often, however, this potential is not realized because undue emphasis is placed on the health technology in isolation, not in context.

Global PHAT 2010: Moving Beyond the Technology puts the health technology in context, focusing on human-centered, practical implementation strategies in developing country settings. This one day event brings together health technology implementers to examine the critical factors that make cutting edge technologies successful, including capacity building, partnership development, monitoring and evaluation, workflow and information flow optimization, and cultural contexts.

Panels include:

• Health ICT Failures: Don’t Re-Invent the Flat Tire
• Effective Electronic Medical Records: Moving Beyond the Technology
• Mobile Health for Community Health Worker Programs: Implementation Insights