12 October 2015
The fourth annual IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference took place in Seattle, Washington from 08 - 11 October 2015. IEEE GHTC is focused on fostering the exchange of information, networking and cooperation in the humanitarian field, and raising awareness on emerging market opportunities and related technology enablers. This year's conference included a symposium celebrating the work of Prof Gaetano Borriello, an IEEE Fellow who spend much of his career developing computing technologies focused on low-resource settings, including the development of the Open Data Kit (ODK), a suite of open-source mobile data collection tools.
Opening Plenary Speakers included Maurizio Vechione (Global Good) and Steve Davis (Path). Maurizio Vechione, Senior VP of Intellectual Ventures shared insight into the Global Good Fund, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Asset Trust to incubate and develop market driven companies that can produce catalytic humanitarian impacts. Steve Davis, President and CEO of Path shared insight into the work of Path in driving transformative global health innovation around the world.
Paul Cunningham, mHealth4Afrika / IIMC participated in the IEEE Smart Village Workshop on 08 October, which focused on IEEE's efforts in enabling micro-grid technologies in developing countries.
Paul organised an hour long case study session (Session C3-2 17:00 - 18:00 on 09 October) entitled "EU Research and Innovation Framework Programme for mHealth in Africa". This session provided insights in IST-Africa activities, Horizon 2020 opportunities to fund cooperation around African research challenges under ICT-39-2017 and the co-design of mHealth4Afrika proposal co-funded under ICT39-2015. mHealth4Afrika is focused on co-designing an open source, multilingual mHealth platform for effective use in urban, rural and deep rural health clinics in Southern Africa (Malawi, South Africa), East Africa (Kenya) and Horn of Africa (Ethiopia).
This session was well attended with a lot of interest generated in the specific research actions which will be undertaken within mHealth4Afrika and the activities being undertaken by the IST-Africa Initiative.