EWB Design for Global Health Workshop 2 - Hearing from the experts

[Victoria Gerrard]

For those of you knew to the EWB-UK Health and Mobility Community of Practice as a first initiative of this new group we are running regular design workshops to discuss, design and prototype healthcare technologies for the developing world. We will explore the challenges of healthcare technology provisioning and explore how design could meet any healthcare needs identified. We will discuss current solutions and then focus in on the group’s particular interests. The work will lead on to the design and development of solutions identified by members during the discussions. Depending on the groups need and wants we would like to arrange appropriate speakers to fill any knowledge gaps identified, arrange workshop space to build prototypes and give members an opportunity to present their relevant work and gather feedback from the group etc.

 

Workshop 2. Hearing from the experts

12^th January 2011, 6-9pm – Imperial College London

 

Register at - http://www.ewb-uk.org/globalhealth/apply

 

 

The second EWB-UK Design for Global Health Workshop is here! One common theme coming from the first workshop in November was that it is very difficult to assess the problems without talking to the people who face the challenges of working with medical equipment in low resource settings on a daily basis. This workshop will focus on accessing the knowledge of these experts and working with them to define the problem statement that as engineers we can seek to solve.

 

In addition to this a number of participants at the last meeting mentioned that they were already developing healthcare products for the developing world. At this workshop we would like to give participants an opportunity to pitch their project to potential collaborators in the group in order to help them form teams to develop their products. (These presentations will be distributed to the HMT community after the event for those members not able to attend the meeting in person and therefore we encourage colleagues based overseas to register to the group at http://www.ewb-uk.org/knowledge/healthcare in order to receive these updates and become involved in the groups activities - this includes healthcare professionals, manufacturers and engineers).

 

In addition to this we are very privileged to be joined by Adriana Velazquez, the coordinator of the department of Essential Health Technologies at the World Health Organisation in Geneva. Adriana has a wealth of knowledge in this area and I hope her enthusiasm will motivate us to move forward with our respective projects and make them a success! 

 

 

Speakers:

 

Adriana Velazquez -Coordinator of Diagnostic Imaging and Medical Devices Unit, Essential Health Technologies, World Health Organization. Adriana  studied  for a bachelors in Biomedical Engineering in Mexico before completing a postgraduate degree at Case Western Reserve University in the USA.  She has more than 25 years of professional experience in biomedical and clinical engineering having worked in both private and public sector hospitals in Mexico for 16 years before moving to the Ministry of Health and being nominated General Director of the National Centre for Health Technology Excellence after 4 years of service. From 1991 she acted as consultant to PAHO/WHO for the Latin-American region and under her direction the NCHTE became a Collaborating Centre for WHO in 2008. In May 2007 Adriana presented the WHO Health Technologies Resolution when it was accepted by the member states and since October 2008 she has been working at the World Health Organization to fulfil this resolution. Since she became the coordinator of the Medical Devices Unit at WHO in 2009 Adriana has been leading the Global Initiative on Health Technologies at WHO.

 

 

If you are interesting in attending the second design workshop please register online at http://www.ewb-uk.org/globalhealth/apply. Don't worry if you missed the first as although it was a part of a series each workshop can be attended as a stand alone event. If you would like any further information about the event please contact Vicky at victoria...@ewb-uk.org.

 

Many thanks,

 

Victoria

 

---

 

Victoria Gerrard

Health and Mobility Technology Coordinator

EWB-UK