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mHealth Summit: Health Gets Mobile

mHealth Summit: A Summit on Mobile Technologies as a Platform for Health Research and Healthcare Delivery

October 29-30, 2009, Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC

From Reuters:

2009 Inaugural mHealth Summit Brings Together Health, Technology and Policy Communities to Advance Technological Innovation in Global Healthcare

From the event website:

The mHealth Summit, a public-private partnership of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, will focus on mobile technologies as a platform for health research and healthcare delivery.

• Information on the agenda, presentations, and accomodations

About the mHealth Summit

The two-day event will explore the role of biomedical research as the driver for the development of compelling applications based on mobile technology. The Summit will bring together 450 to 600 U.S. and international researchers, technology experts, and policymakers in the public sector, as well as those from academia, industry, and NGOs to:

• Assess current policies regarding mobile health technologies and their use in reducing or eliminating domestic and global health disparities
• Build bridges between the scientific community and mobile technology developers to identify mHealth solutions
• Highlight scientific opportunities and challenges in using mobile technologies to improve public health
• Discuss and craft a vision for the development and use of mobile technologies in the future

The agenda will include several case study tracks, as well as panel discussions that address broad themes related to mobile technologies as tools for research and improving health. The mHealth Summit program committee has announced a call for presentations and is seeking case studies that describe current or completed research projects using mobile technologies to improve research data collection, healthcare delivery, health outcomes, and/or health and science education. All NIH Institutes and Centers are strongly urged to encourage researchers from their intramural and extramural communities to submit presentation abstracts.

Current partnering Institutes and Centers include:

• Fogarty International Center (FIC)
• National Cancer Institute (NCI)
• National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD)
• National Center on Research Resources (NCRR)
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
• National Library of Medicine (NLM)

Sponsors

The mHealth Summit is sponsored by FNIH in partnership with the NIH, the U.S. State Department, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the United Nations Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, and the World Bank. Supporting industry members are Microsoft Research, the Abbott Fund, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, Inc.

The U.S. NIH (National Institutes of Health) provides additional information on each day’s sessions, and a link to a live RealVideo stream, as well. The free RealMedia player is required to view this stream.

View the mHealth Summit live video stream (Runtime 570 minutes)

From NIH’s website:

Summit Mission
The mission of the mHealth Summit is to explore the use of mobile technologies to improve public health, particularly regarding underserved populations; health research, training, and education applications; and delivery systems, in the U.S. and around the world.

Summit Overview
Mobile technologies have the potential to transform global health care on many fronts, from research and diagnostics to training and preventative interventions. Targeting experts from such diverse fields as medical research, software design, clinical health care, hardware manufacture and network transmission, the summit hopes to spur development and deployment of innovative, practical, affordable and effective solutions to health challenges in underserved and resource-poor populations.
In addition to reviewing current tools and research from a wide spectrum of stakeholders, the summit will foster inter-disciplinary collaboration that could identify entirely new opportunities that team existing mobile-industry companies with emerging public health facilitators.

Summit Goals

Start time: Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:00 AM EDT (-0400)

In addition, you can follow (and contribute) on Twitter to the live tweetstream for the Mobile Health Summit Both both days via the #mhs09 hashtag.

Tags: ATA, cellular, crisis, DHS, Emergency, FEMA, flu, FrontlineSMS, H1N1, health, Healthcare, mHealth, mobile, NIH, Nixle, pandemic, preparedness, ptsd, sms, swine flu, TBI, telemedicine, underserved, WAP, web, wireless

Rural Telehealth and Advanced Technologies Conference

As the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania heads into the 60th day of its marathon state budget impasse, that’s no deterrent to some of the best and brightest minds in healthcare technology, military medicine, rural development and public policy.

They’ll be converging on St. Francis University’s Center of  Excellence for Remote and Medically Underserved Areas (CERMUSA) in Loretto, PA next week for the inaugural  Rural Telehealth and Advanced Technologies Conference.

I plan to attend the conference, and to live-blog and/or live-tweet the proceedings, circumstances permitting, on Friday, September 4th. (More information to come.)

From the official conference website:

The focus of this inaugural conference will be Chronic Care: Model, Solutions, and Technology Applications. With the ever-increasing need to provide efficient, effective chronic care for afflicted individuals, especially in rural and underserved areas, this event will spotlight the Chronic Care Model and the escalating presence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), as well as the causes treatments, and technological advances that encompass healthcare, both in the military and civilian populations.

• Conference Agenda is here.
• Speaker Bios are here.
• Registration info is here.

Continuing Education Opportunities

If you’re a qualifying healthcare professional, you can earn up to 6 hours of continuing education credit/hours, based on your  participation and credentials.  Read more…

Conference Sponsors:

Healthcare: A Blueprint for Transformational Change

While not directly conference related, I’m particularly proud of the video below of my friend and colleague Nick Jacobs, FACHE delivering the Graduate School address at the conference venue, St. Francis University’s 2009 commencement ceremonies.

He’s introduced here by Fr. Gabriel Zeis, OFM, President of St. Francis University, who will be hosting the Rural Telehealth and Advanced Technologies Conference.

Nick’s a singularly unique, outside-the-box kind of guy when it comes to innovative healthcare thinking.  As a hospital CEO,  he was identified as the first ever to have his own blog years ago (I helped just a bit) by the Wall Street Journal and Fortune.

Nick also brought 24-hour visitation, fountains, home-baked bread and strolling violin players into his hospital, flying in the face of all “conventional wisdom.” The result? One of the lowest infection rates of any hospital in the region, among other outstanding health outcomes. I encourage you to listen to what he  has to say. (Full disclosure: I edited the video.)

Tags: Blue Cross, CERMUSA, Chronic Care model, Conference, Disepio Institute, DVBIC, F. Nicholas Jacobs, FACHE, health, Healthcare, HighMark, John Murtha, Loretto, medicine, MedTechIQ, military, nick jacobs, PA, Pennsylvania, PTSB, reform, Rural Telehealth and Advanced Technologies, St. Francis University, TATRC, TBI, telehealth, telemedicine, WRAMC