WHERE & WHEN

• Granada, Nicaragua - Monday Nov 29 – Friday Dec 3, 2010

• visit the IMeCA website at www.informaticamedica-lac.org for details about venue, travel and hotels

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE

•  Implementers of health informatics tools interested in identifying technologies currently available for use in primary health care and/or public health research
  

• Technology Developers looking to expand existing eHealth & mHealth tools and systems and/or create new ones based on international standards for open source health informatics
  

• Decision Makers & Donors hoping to understand the needs, challenges and opportunities for using open source informatics technologies in improving healthcare in Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC)
  

LANGUAGES

• IMeCA 2010 will be facilitated in both English and Spanish. Real-time translation of meeting and workshop sessions will be available, and all materials will be available in both languages.

MEETING

• 8:30 am – 5 pm Mon / Tues (Nov 29 – 30)

OBJECTIVES

1. To share experiences with open source mobile health technologies
2. To report and validate the preliminary results of the in-depth landscape analysis of eHealth & mHealth in the region being coordinated as part of IMeCA 2010 activities
3. To set priorities for the future of the IMeCA community and to strengthen collaborations in LAC

Topics to be covered include:

• Health Priorities in the Latin America & Caribbean Region
• eHealth Trends in Limited Resource Settings
• Why Open Source? Opportunities for Open Source eHealth Technologies
• Survey of Open Source eHealth and mHealth Technologies: Presentations from around the world
• Choosing the Right mHealth Tool for the Job
• Informing eHealth and mHealth Policy: Sharing Preliminary Regional Landscape Analysis Findings
• Creating a network of service providers for open source systems and technologies
• How to Promote “Coding in Country”: Challenges in Local Development of eHealth & mHealth Tools
• IMeCA Community Priority Setting and Future Directions

WORKSHOPS

• 8:30 am – 4 pm Wed / Thurs / Fri (Dec 1-3)

• We are accepting proposals for additional/different workshop and seminar topics. Final decisions will be made in late September based on relevance and interest of the community. Current workshops and hands-on training sessions include:

WRITE-SHOP FOR DECISION MAKERS (3 days)

• create regionally relevant policy briefs
• prepare white papers for eHealth and mHealth projects in early implementation phases
• prepare brief funding proposals

WORKING WITH mHEALTH TOOLS FOR IMPLEMENTERS (3 days)

• Hands-on orientation sessions for implementers highlighting a range of mHealth tools based on the
• OpenROSA standards for mobile data collection, health outreach, and decision support.

DEVELOPER SKILLS (3 days) proposed training sessions for developers on these (and other) topics:

• mobile application development: J2ME, Android, OpenXData, others
• XForms + XML
• OpenMRS interoperability with mobile tools
• security + authentication
• Coded In Country (CIC): Strengthening CIC Nodes in the region

REGISTRATION, COSTS & IMPORTANT DATES

Please register on-line and make sure to indicate whether you need travel and housing assistance in the “fellowship application” section.

• http://tinyurl.com/inscripcion-registration

• Regular: USD 100
• Student: USD 50
  

Meeting & Workshops (Nov 29 – Dec 3)

• Regular: USD 200
  
• Student: USD 100
  

• Friday 29 October - fellowship support request deadline
• Friday 29 October - poster/presentation abstract submission deadline
• Friday 29 October - poster/presentation and fellowship support notification
• Friday November - final deadline for registration

FELLOWSHIPS

A limited number of fellowships are available for 1) registration fee waivers, 2) travel and/or 3) housing support for meeting facilitators, workshop trainers, presenters and participants based on interests and needs.

Please indicate on the registration form if you need fee waivers, travel or housing assistance BY FRIDAY OCTOBER 22

TRAVEL & HOTEL

IMeCA2010 will be held in the Hotel Granada in Granada, Nicaragua – 1 hour by car from the Agosto C. Sandino International Airport in Managua. There is a block of rooms reserved at a special rate for the conference: $72,USD +tax for a single room or $36 USD +tax for a shared room with another IMeCA participant. For airport transfer information, recommendations for additional hotels and general travel see the meeting website.

*If you receive fellowship support, the local coordinators from the Sustainable Sciences Institute will be arranging air travel, local transport and/or hotel accommodations directly.

POSTERS & PRESENTATIONS

All participants involved in designing, developing, testing, implementing or evaluating relevant health information and communication technologies for the public, private sector and/or research sectors are invited to submit an abstract for a poster or a presentation.

1. We encourage you to share
2. successes, failures and lessons learned from past eHealth and mHealth projects,
   ideas for new projects, and
   
3. challenges and opportunities with developing and implementing Open Source ICTs for health. Health topics of particular interest for IMeCA 2010 include maternal & child health, immunization, infectious disease surveillance and alert systems, and disaster & emergency response

There will be small prizes in the various categories, including Best Overall from the LAC region, Best Overall from a non-LAC region, and Most Innovative. We will also provide help for authors with the best posters and presentations to apply to the Innovator Award Competition being sponsored by IDRC and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Please complete the “abstract” section of the registration form BY FRIDAY OCTOBER 22

JOIN IMeCA

If you're interested and not already a member, join the discussions of the IMeCA group mailto: imeca_lac@googlegroups.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Please contact Heather Zornetzer at the Sustainable Sciences Institute - Nicaragua (hzornetzer@gmail.com) or Joaquín Blaya at eHealth Systems – Chile (jblaya@ehealthsystems.cl).
at http://www.informaticamedica-lac.org