Jahresberichte

Project Group
Global Health Informatics (GHI)

Dr. Fleur Fritz-Kebede, Heidelberg (Lead)
Uwe Wahser, Sandhausen (Lead)

Activities from January, 1st 2023 to December, 31st 2023

At the 2023 GMDS conference in Heilbronn, a workshop on the topic of "Global Health Informatics" (GHI) led to the formation of a project group with the same name. The proposal was approved by FAMI in December, and Fleur Fritz-Kebede (University Hospital Heidelberg) and Uwe Wahser (GIZ) were both selected as spokespersons for this group. Since then, topics have been developed together with the group's interested members. The main goals and activities are the sustainable networking of experts working in Germany with each other and with national sister organizations of GMDS in partner countries, as well as with international professional societies. This aims to promote, for example, the exchange of students and researchers, provide opportunities for supervising theses, develop joint teaching formats and project proposals, and encourage the focus on global topics at relevant professional conferences.

Throughout the year 2023, group members have reached out to other member organisations of the IMIA and related Health Informatics Associations to discuss potential synergies, such as the GHI group of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the Pan-African Health Informatics Association (HELINA) and the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) and several national level associations. Members of the project group also participated in a number of international conferences to explore the interest and relevance of an international collaboration with GMDS. Some of the conferences are listed below:

• 2023-05-22 to 2023-05-25, 33rd Medical Informatics Europe, Gothenburg, Sweden
• 2023-09-17 to 2023-09-21, GMDS23, Heilbronn, Germany
• 2023-11-01 to 2023-11-03, Helina 2023, Cape Town, South Africa
• 2023-12-04 to 2023-12-06, Global Digital Health Forum, Washington DC

The core team of the project group has started to meet regularly to plan their activities and has started to set up their channels such as the web sites and a mailing list. A quarterly webinar series was started with occasional inputs from external partners. On March 15th 2024, Dr. Alain Labrique from the World Health Organisation (WHO) gave a presentation about their digital health portfolio.At the 2024 GMDS the group will host a symposium to discuss options for an improved co-operation of international Health Informatics associations that operate in the Global South.

Term of service of the group lead

December 2023 until December 2026