[Air-L] ICT for Development: Healthcare perspectives (Breaking Boundaries? Seminar)

[Daniel Villar Onrubia]

Dear all,

I hope the final event of the "Breaking Boundaries? Series" will of
interest to some of you. We will be live streaming the seminar today for
those who cannot attend in person:
http://breakingboundariesoxford.org/?page_id=414

Best wishes,

---

Daniel Villar Onrubia
Oxford Internet Institute. University of Oxford
daniel.villaronrubia at oii.ox.ac.uk
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=170
@villaronrubia

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*ICT for Development: Healthcare perspectives*.

Thursday 13th March 2014

17:00 - 18:30

Seminar Room G/H, Department of Education, 15 Norham
Gardens<http://breakingboundariesoxford.org/?page_id=50>

This seminar will examine the notion that technologies can contribute to
healthcare development initiatives in developing countries and explore the
challenges associated with such approaches.

*Dr Niall Winters*
*Reader in Learning Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab
<http://www.lkl.ac.uk/> (LKL)*


In this talk, Niall Winters will present his current ESRC/DFID-funded
research (see: http://www.mchw.org) on the design and implementation of
mobile learning interventions to support the training of healthcare workers
in Kenya. He will discuss how the project has sought to determine how
mobile technologies can help address the boundaries to participation in
learning faced by healthcare workers and their trainers.


Dr. Niall Winters is a Reader in Learning Technologies at the London
Knowledge Lab <http://www.lkl.ac.uk/> (LKL), Institute of
Education<http://www.ioe.ac.uk/>
, University of London <http://www.lon.ac.uk/> and Deputy Head of the
Department
of Culture, Communication and
Media<http://www.ioe.ac.uk/research/departments/56588.html>.
His main research interest is in the participatory design of mobile
interventions for medical and healthcare training. The current focus of
this research is two-fold: supporting the training of Kenyan community
health volunteers in child development and investigating the use of mobile
technology to support postgraduate medical education in London teaching
hospitals. Niall is a member of the Strategy Planning Group of the London
International Development Centre <http://lidc.org.uk/> and of the TEL
Scoping and Review Group of Health Education England <http://hee.nhs.uk/>.


Niall was previously a RCUK Academic
Fellow<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/acfellow/info.asp> at
the LKL and was Programme Director for the MA in Education & Technology and
Programme co-Director of the MSc in Learning Technologies. He holds a PhD
in Computer Science <http://www.cs.tcd.ie/> (2002) from the University of
Dublin, Trinity College <http://www.tcd.ie/> and a BSc (D.Hons) in Computer
Science and Experimental Physics (1997) from the National University of
Ireland, Maynooth <http://www.may.ie/>. His
PhD<http://www.lkl.ac.uk/niall/nwdis/> addressed
how to store and search large datasets of images. The primary application
was vision-based mobile robot navigation.  He  has held visiting research
positions with the Everyday Learning Group at Media Lab
Europe<http://medialabeurope.org/> in
Dublin, and the Computer Vision Lab <http://vislab.isr.ist.utl.pt/> at
Instituto
Superior Tecnico <http://www.ist.utl.pt/> in Lisbon.


*Marco Haenssgen*
*DPhil Candidate in International Development, University of Oxford*

Marco's presentation will shift the focus from health workers to the
potential recipients of mobile-phone-based health services. Focusing on
upstream elements of mHealth, Marco will explore patterns of mobile phone
use and healthcare-seeking behaviour, drawing on fieldwork insights from
rural India (Rajasthan) and China (Gansu). The evidence suggests that
common assumptions of mHealth proponents are easily violated; that is,
mobile phone ownership is not ubiquitous and does not necessarily reflect
mobile phone use, people do not necessarily share mobile phones freely
amongst each other, they are not necessarily keen and excited technological
learners, and they do develop mobile phone-aided coping strategies that may
compete with mhealth. While both contexts offer, at least in theory, the
potential for mobile technology to break boundaries, the presentation will
emphasise the importance of understanding upstream factors of mHealth
*before* deploying technological solutions in order to provide effective
solutions and to avoid the potential exacerbation of healthcare inequities.