Speakers |
Dr. Najeeb Mohamed Al Shorbaji has been working as Director, Department of Knowledge Management and Sharing, at the World Health Organization Headquarters (WHO/HQ) in Geneva since September 2008. Prior to that, he held the posts of Information Scientist, Regional Advisor for Health Information Management and Telecommunication and Coordinator for Knowledge Management and Sharing at the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office since February 1988. He holds a PhD in Information Sciences. Dr Al-Shorbaji's current portfolio covers WHO publishing activities and programmes, library and information services, knowledge networks, eHealth, knowledge translation and WHO Collaborating Centres. Through his career in the WHO, he initiated and led a number of information and telecommunication technology projects and knowledge networks. He is a member of a number national and international professional societies and associations specialised in information management and health informatics. He has authored over 80 research papers and articles presented in various conferences and published in professional journals.
Dr. Don de Savigny is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Basel and Head of the Health Systems Interventions Research Unit in the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology at the Swiss TPH. He is also an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a frequent advisor to the World Health Organization. He serves on advisory panels including: as Chair of the Health Metrics Network Technical Advisory Group, Chair of the WHO Roll Back Malaria Working Group on Scalable Malaria Vector Control, the Scientific Advisory Committee for the INDEPTH Network of Demographic and Health Observatories, the WHO African Malaria Expert Committee, the Gates Malaria Partnership, and the Council for Health Research for Development. His current research focuses on interventions to strengthen health systems in developing countries, and on the health system effects of Global Health Initiatives for scaling up access. Additional experience includes: Head of the Swiss TPH Field Laboratory in Tanzania (currently the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre), Principal Health Specialist for the International Development Research Centre, Canada (1988 – 1996) and many years working in Africa, most recently as lead facilitator for the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Program (TEHIP) for the Ministry of Health in Tanzania.
Jan Zbinden is the eHealth Project Manager at the Basel Department of Health, Switzerland. He has been working at the Health Department of Basel-Stadt since 2003 as an scientific collaborator with activities in public health and statistics. In October 2010 he took on the position of Project Manager of the Regio Basel eHealth pilot project. He holds a Master of Science in Business and Economics from the University of Basel.
Claudio Zaugg is a trained Biomedical Engineer with a Master’s degree in International Health (MIH). Before joining the institute in 2008 he has worked for European biomedical research in international development projects. Since 2008 he is with the Swiss TPH and works as a Project Manager at the Health Technology and Telemedicine Unit of the Swiss Centre for International Health (SCIH). His unit is engaged in Health Technology planning- and assessment, physical resource management in health systems, and with Information and Communication Systems (ICTs) in resource constraint settings. Having designed, developed and introduced open source eHealth applications in both high- and low-income countries himself, he is a strong advocate for open and free software and the vast opportunities appropriate ICT applications are offering in today’s healthcare systems.
Chris Baily has, through his work at the Rockefeller Foundation and for the last nine years at the World Health Organization, established Knowledge Management techniques as a key area in public health. He was one of the co-founders of the OpenMRS electronic medical records platform and community, and has been an important leader in advocating a standards-based open architecture approach to national eHealth systems in resource poor settings. The common element of his work has been taking a peer learning approach to technology development, implementation, use, and the establishment of the necessary standards and policies for true country ownership and sustainability of national health information systems. Educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities, he recently has been nominated for an academic appointment at the Harvard Medical School in their Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.
Dr. Nicolas Maire's background is in computational biology and software engineering. Since 2009, he has led the Public Health Computing group at Swiss TPH. The group is responsible for the design and implementation of both computational- and data-management platforms for a number of research projects at the Institute. Dr. Maire also contributes to the teaching activities of Swiss TPH, both at the University of Basel, and internationally.
Kelvin Hui is currently a Senior Advisor in the German International Cooperation (GIZ) Health Program in Bangladesh where he works on strengthening the country’s health system with a primary focus on health information systems. he has over 10 years of experience advising health authorities on issues regarding Health Information Systems (HIS) strengthening. He began his career as a consultant on Information Systems in the private sector, advising companies on the use of Information Technology to improve work processes and enhance efficiency. He subsequently specialized in the field of Health Information Systems and eHealth in low resourced country settings, advising health authorities in the area of HIS strengthening. Mr. Hui has work experience in various Asian countries such as in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan. His education background is in Computer Science and he is also a certified project manager from the Project Management Institute.
Jim Barrington is the Program Director for the SMS for Life project, which is focused on ensuring all malaria patients have easy access to the life saving anti-malarials and Quinine Injectables they need, when and where they need them. Jim, on secondment from Novartis to Roll Back Malaria, is driving the overall initiative and taking the lead in defining the solution, sourcing the partners, resources and funding, establishing the steering committee, liaising with the Ministry of Health in Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, the DRC and the RBM Partnership Secretariat and finding and providing all the resources and funding necessary to complete pilots and effect full country scale up’s. Until the end of 2008, Jim was the Corporate CIO of Novartis. He joined Novartis in February 2002 as Chief Information Operations Officer of Novartis Pharma AG, and in 2003 also assumed the position of Corporate Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Novartis, Jim was Senior Vice President and Group CIO with ABB in Zurich, Switzerland. Before that, he spent five years in Italy as Vice President of IT with the Whirlpool Corporation with accountability for all IT in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, India and China. He also worked with Gillette for 10 years in the UK and Germany, and spent four years with Eli Lilly in Ireland. Jim holds an MBA from Kingston University.
Dr. Tarek Badr, M.B.B.CH, is currently the General Manager of the Directorate General of Radiology and Chief of the Executive Office for Radiation Protection, Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) Egypt. From 2002-1011 he worked in the field of radiology information management at the MOPH as; Director of the Radiology Information Center, Monitoring and Information Coordinator in the Egyptian Swiss Radiology Project, Information Coordinator of the Integrated Management Program of Radioactive Sealed Sources. From 2006-2011 he planned and managed the strategic plan of radiology at MOHP, which succeeded in providing the necessary advanced radiology services in all Egyptian governorates. Dr. Badr manages the pilot model of the tele-radiology network through the Egyptian Swiss Radiology Project and the National PACS Project, which provides quality diagnosis services to MOHP hospitals - especially in the remote areas. In the field of radiation protection, he is trained on radiation crises management through cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and now manages the cooperation with the Radiation Global Threat Reduction group, US Department of Energy.
Dr. Osman Ratib MD, PhD is a Professor, Chairman of the Department of Radiology, and Head of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital of Geneva. Dr. Ratib, board certified in Cardiology and Nuclear Medicine, trained and obtained his medical degrees at the University of Geneva, and gained an international reputation in the development of computer aided diagnosis in cardiac imaging and in the development of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). After obtaining a degree in Biophysics and a Ph.D. in Medical Imaging from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1989 Dr. Ratib returned to Geneva where he directed a Medical Imaging section of a newly created medical informatics division. He became one of the active figures in medical imaging research in Europe and is a member of several societies of computed radiology and telemedicine, as well as the former president of the EuroPACS society. In 1998 he was appointed as Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Radiology at UCLA, responsible for coordinating the deployment of an enterprise-wide strategy and infrastructure for image management and communication. In 2005 he returned to Geneva to take the position of Head of Nuclear Medicine responsible for new molecular and functional imaging techniques, and in particular, hybrid PET-CT. His clinical activities and areas of expertise include cardiovascular MR and CT imaging procedures, combined PET-CT imaging and advance cardiovascular imaging. In 2007 he was appointed Chairman of the radiology department called ‘Department of Medical Imaging and Information Sciences’. In his current position he is responsible for six clinical divisions including radiology, neuroradiology, radiooncology, nuclear medicine and medical informatics, as well as a cyclotron and pre-clinical imaging unit. He has pioneered several innovative projects including an advanced cardiovascular PET-CT program and the first whole-body PET-MRI unit in Europe. He is also founding member and president of the OsiriX foundation, a non-profit organization for the promotion of Open-Source software in medicine.
Gonçalo Castro is a health informatics specialist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. He studied Informatics Engineering at University of Porto and his main activities are in the field of ICT in health for development. Gonçalo Castro analyses and develops information systems for international health programmes implemented by the Swiss TPH. Among other responsibilities, he is the team leader in the development of a perinatal registry for the Ukrainian public healthcare system.
Professor L. Suzanne Suggs, Ph.D., MS., CHES is a Senior Assistant Professor in the Institute of Public Communication, Faculty of Communication Sciences at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano Switzerland. Her principal research examines the use of communication technologies (mobile phone, web, and email) and messaging strategies (tailoring and targeting) to improve health status, health outcomes, and facilitate health behavior change. She has recently published several papers, two systematic reviews, and a book chapter on the use of e-health and mobile phones for health promotion and disease control. She serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives and the Journal of Communication Technology and Human Behaviors. She is a co-founder of the European Social Change and Social Marketing Association. Prior to joining the faculty in Lugano in August 2007, she was Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program in Health Communication, Department of Marketing Communication at Emerson College and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Public Health and Family Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. She has held positions as Associate Director of Research at HealthMedia (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and as Research Assistant and Project Coordinator at the Oregon Center for Applied Science (Eugene, Oregon). She earned her PhD in Health Studies from Texas Woman’s University where she focused on health behavior change strategies using ICTs. She earned a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Evidence-Based Practice Centre, at McMaster University in Ontario Canada where her research focused on clinical decision-making, patient-provider communication, and healthy aging.
Dr. Valérie D'Acremont, MD, PhD, is a clinical Epidemiologist and currently a Senior scientist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in the Interventions and Health Systems Unit of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. She leads projects aimed at assessing the efficacy, effectiveness and impact of new interventions for the diagnosis of malaria and non-malaria fevers, and improving case management of childhood illnesses. She is also a consultant of tropical and infectious diseases and Deputy Head of the Travel Clinic, Department of ambulatory care and community medicine, University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland, and co-leads the tropical/travel medicine unit (~10’000 clients and patients per year for pre-travel counselling and post-travel consultations). She is currently project leader or co-leader for eight clinical studies, four on diagnostic strategies for infectious diseases, and four on improvement of patient management strategies, both in Switzerland and malaria endemic countries. Additionally she serves as a malaria expert for the Global Malaria Programme, Diagnostic, Treatment and Vaccine Unit of the WHO, working on diagnostics and treatment for malaria and non-malaria fevers in children and adults. She earned both, her Masters in International Health and her PhD. in Epidemiology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, as well as her Medical Degree at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dr. Martin Röösli is head of the Unit for Environmental Exposures and Health at the Swiss Tropical- and Public Health Institute in Basel. He has a background in atmospheric physics and a PhD in environmental epidemiology. His research focuses on environmental health and includes exposure assessment studies, aetiological research and health risk assessments in the area of electromagnetic fields, ionizing radiation, passive smoking, noise exposure and ambient air pollution. He is a member in various national and international commissions on environmental health risks and has published numerous scientific papers, reviews and book chapters.
Jørn Klungsøyr is a Researcher/PhD-Fellow at the Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Norway. He has a mixed background of health and ICT, including working as a professional nurse, and formal software development training and experience. His focus the past 10 years has been on developing open source technologies and collaborations for mobile data capture and management in low-resource settings. His passion for solving data problems in low resource setting is linked to his 10+ year childhood in Ethiopia, as well as his food aid and relief work in the same country in 2000. This is also where his interests in ICT and health lead to the developments of his first real software effort: EpiHandy, a generic form-based data capture tool using windows mobile PDA's. The successor of EpiHandy is openXdata (www.openXdata.org) which follows much of the same philosophy of generic form tools, but focuses on form-based data capture on low cost off-the-shelves mobile phones as low as $30. OpenXdata is a collaborative effort of over 10 organizations and companies. Jørn co-leads projects that have been built on and contributed to openXdata, like mVAC for mobile vaccination registries and OMEVAC for mobile data capture in clinical trials.