Thursday 17 June 2010

Mark Siegel: advancing learning in healthcare using mobile technology (mHealth) at mLearnCon


Rapidly talking gray haired man, focuses on the end user as the main stakeholder. Consultant working in Asia and Africa, his company: http://www.msasolutions.net/.

Great book to read: Checklist Manifesto book (http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0805091742) by Atul Gawande.
(Will post his slides once he sends them)

Liveblog notes:
Truly following a context model and knowing and bounding with your end user, to ensure you will get the context right, the more you will be successful. Use creativity.
Overarching message: do not try and reinvent the wheel, take what you used well and think about that in a context of mLearning.
smartphones pushes us to take a relook at learning (not training, real learning).
Many emerging regions is leapfrogging into a different learning ecosystem.

Promise of mHealth to advance learning
Partners in Health (www.pih.org) came right in, used the mobile technology they had already in place, and were able to build their infrastructure to build everything up (they did not need internet - it was down - but they could do everything online)
iPhone based IT infrastructure and android phones
providing patient records, medical triage, tracking volunteer staff, monitor warehouse supplies ....
Partners in Health is a self-contained unit.

What makes mobile so suitable for health purposes?
Great because you can integrate: mhealth, ehealth, telemedicine, CME - this is an option that never existed before.
Grounded in the audience, and system oriented.
Overall goal: behavior change leading to a healthier population.

Strategies
Get a complete working set-up, that is generic and scalable, sustainable.
Leveling the playing field of that knowledge in a non-hierarchical way, as you must be able to reach all the HCW in a sometimes challenging region.
Assure continuity!
sharing knowledge more efficiently.
Build generic processes.
Interesting in developing countries: much more mobile oriented (because of many, many, many money streams).
A major part of the budget goes to electronic patient records (US funding) and a lot of funding to adherence (follow-up medication...).
Mobile technology gets more and more interesting thanks to sensors.
Try to formalize the way learners are learning already: really grasp the way learning happens, with all its different features (which networks, which approach...)

some of the examples:
UN mobile health report: episurveyor: 2-way data exchange (http://www.episurveyor.org/user/index)
Frontline sms = open architecture: www.frontlinesms.com/
Commcare (tanzania):
Open Elis (reporting and reference) open architecture laboratory: http://openelis.uhl.uiowa.edu/?q=node/1 (very successful and picked up everywhere, started in Peru)
Nacera (Peru): remote communications between healthcare workers, to address maternal and childcare
Wireless data transmission: compact cell phone microscope to diagnose malraia in field settings: university of California.
Disease awareness and information: very big use of mobile technology. Speech recognition using mHealth to address literacy barriers: healthline in Pakistan: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~healthline/.
Communication and training: Amcom software platform (http://www.amcomsoftware.com/), i-tech global laboratory information system training. National school of nursing in Guatemala.

Framework Mark offered
needs and audience
learning information and communications programs
learning environment and organization
learning strategies and tools
development and delivery
learning system

social, cultural and audience considerations: solutions integral to people's lives, storytelling, peer to peer, ...