ICT for development - ICT and health: Investigating knowledge gaps
Overview
ICT has the potential to impact upon almost every aspect of the health sector. In public health, information management and communication processes are pivotal, and are facilitated or limited by the available information and communication technology.
In addition, beyond the formal health sector, the ability of impoverished communities to access services and engage with and demand a health sector that responds to their priorities and needs, is importantly influenced by wider information and communication processes, mediated by ICT.
Healthlink Worldwide and two partners, ISHED and AfriAfya completed a four month consultancy for InfoDev to investigate the knowledge gaps about ICT and health in order to provide guidance and recommendations to policy makers and donors.
The team worked together to:
- Develop a knowledge map that considers the current state of and major gaps in knowledge related to the role of ICT in the health sector in developing countries. This has been developed into the Key lists and the taxonomy and forms the main part of the ICT and health section of the Source website (of which Healthlink Worldwide is a partner).
- Manage an online consultation in relation to the knowledge map, September 2005. See below for information on the summary.
- Write a framework paper which identifies issues and boundaries of the role of ICT in health, and identify key lessons (see below for more information.
- Select a number of main policy recommendations, identified from the research.
All of the study outputs produced as part of the infoDev study, listed below, are available on the Source website together with the taxonomy and key lists of resources. They form the 'ICT and health' topic window
Summary of the framework paper (PDF, 4 pages, 240 KB)
Literature review (PDF, 12 pages 300 KB)
Online discussion summary (PDF, 1 page, 110 KB)