-----Original Message----- From: uw-dev-admin at cs.washington.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Travis Kriplean Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:48 AM To: dub at dub.washington.edu; uw-dev - Mailing List Subject: [uw-dev] Tomorrow @ dub: Gerry Douglas, University of Pittsburgh, "Touchscreen Clinical Workstations At The Point Of Care: Guiding Protocols and Managing Data In Malawi"
Hello, A reminder that this Wednesday Gerry Douglas, Director of Baobab Health and a PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, will be joining us to talk about work that he has been doing in Southern Africa helping to improve health care through easy-to-use clinical workstations. Please be sure to come by! We'll be meeting in our normal place in CSE 403. Cheers, Travis ---------------------------------------------- *Where:* CSE 403 (directions below) *When:* September 17th, 12-1:20PM *Who:* Gerry Douglas, Director of Baobab Health and Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh Food will be provided! *Title:* Touchscreen Clinical Workstations At The Point Of Care: Guiding Protocols and Managing Data In Malawi *Abstract:* Malawi, Africa has a population of 14 million. One million are HIV positive and there are just 280 doctors in the country. This tremendous disparity between healthcare workers and people in need of treatment contributes to high mortality rates particularly for women and children. Treatment protocols exist that do not require physician expertise. These protocols can ensure a minimum standard of care, but to be effective they must be rigorously followed and carefully monitored. Baobab Health, a Malawi-based non governmental organization, has been addressing this crisis for the past eight years by applying medical informatics principles to resource-poor settings. The core of Baobab's approach is the introduction of easy-to-use touchscreen clinical workstations at the point of patient care. This system efficiently and accurately guides low-skilled healthcare workers through the diagnosis and treatment of patients according to nationally established treatment protocols. In addition, the system captures timely and accurate data that is used by healthcare workers during patient visits to supplement decision making. This data is aggregated and used at a national level for policy making and analysis. This technology-dependent approach has required both hardware and software innovations, including alternative power approaches, intuitive touchscreen-based user interfaces for users with no computing experience, and low-cost information appliances that are significantly more robust in harsh environments than traditional computers. To date 800,000 patients have been issued nationally unique patient ID numbers and more than 19,000 receive HIV care guided by a Baobab system. *Bio:* Gerry Douglas is the Director of Baobab Health and a PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a Masters in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Victoria. Mr. Douglas has focused his research on the application of medical informatics principles to improving healthcare delivery in developing countries. His work focuses primarily on augmenting clinicians' ability to deliver healthcare in resource-poor settings through the use of a point-of-care system; an approach that is novel in this setting. A secondary focus of his work relates to improving the completeness and accuracy of clinical data collected at point of care. SPEAKER SCHEDULE You can see the entire speaker schedule for the quarter here: http://dub.washington.edu/events/meetings/. You can also subscribe to the Google Calendar feed by either searching for "dub group" within Google Calendar or adding designusebuild at gmail.com <mailto:designusebuild at gmail.com> in the Google Calendar interface. Please send me a mail (travis at cs.washington.edu <mailto:travis at cs.washington.edu>) if you are interested in giving a talk or have a suggestion for a speaker. SEMINAR LOCATION We are meeting in room 403 of CSE (on the 4th floor). You can take the stairs or the elevator to the fourth floor. The Paul Allen Center is located south of the HUB. For a campus map with the CSE location circled, please see the map image at http://www.washington.edu/home/maps/southcentral.html?CSE. _______________________________________________ uw-dev mailing list uw-dev at cs.washington.edu https://mailman.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/uw-dev
