eHealth researchers meet to share and translate knowledge

February 1-4, 2010
Bangkok, Thailand

PANACeA partners met in Bangkok, Thailand from February 1-4, 2010 to discuss the progress of their projects, exchange knowledge with each other and brainstorm the future direction for the Network. This workshop was attended by 29 participants belonging to PANACeA Advisory and Mentoring Team (AMT), partner organizations and few other invited eHealth researchers from the region.

The main objective of this workshop was to share the progress made in the PANACeA projects and seek advice from other network partners on cross-cutting activities such as Policy and Knowledge Translation, Gender and Social Analysis, Network Management, Resource Mobilization and formative evaluation study of the Network. The workshop contained a mix of lectures, group discussions and small group activities. The partners organized stalls for their projects where they presented their project activities and technologies.  The Network stalls had posters and technology demonstrations (e.g. mobile applications, accessories and software programs which they developed for their projects).

The workshop also gave high focus on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in health. Experts on FOSS were invited to conduct this session, which was highly appreciated by the participants.

The highlight of event was the first ‘PANACeA movie festival’. Partners were very excited and fully participated in this activity. Digital stories were made of the projects. The Visual Disability project won the prize for best video.

Concluding remarks and future vision of the Network were presented by Dr Shariq Khoja (Network lead; Assistant Professor, CHS, AKU) and Chaitali Sinha of International Development and Research Center (IDRC), Canada.

This workshop was organized by the CHS eHealth team (Dr Shariq Khoja, Dr Zahid Ali Faheem, Dr Hammad Durrani, Saria Nigar and Abdul Muqeet) of Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.