Meeting AMREF about our project in Senegal

AMREF is an international African organization headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

We had the great opportunity to meet with two representatives of AMREF in Paris: Dr Mor NGOM, Program Coordinator in West Africa (Senegal) and Silvia TOLVE in charge of programs in France.

We were mostly interested in their experience with telemedicine in Senegal. They used to work with the telemedicine service, part of the Minsitry of Health, and are willing to pursue their collaboration to share their experience and expertise: a reference center has been built in Dakar and several projects have been set up with local hospitals to develop e-health in the area. A convention has been prepared with the previous government and should be discussed again soon.

AMREF was also involved in the SAHEL project led by European Space Agency (ESA) in Kenya. The SAHEL project proposes an efficient cooperation between technological players (industries, operators), health stakeholders (health workers, nurses, specialists...), centers of excellence providing medical content for eLearning and NGOs for local implementation with the support of regional actors.

We agreed to collaborate on the construction of the telemedicine project in Senegal with Prof. Mbayang NDIAYE NIANG and the new Ministry of Health led by Prof. Awa Marie COLL SECK. Moreover, we plan to work together on other proposals by sharing expertise and network.

Back from Forum 2012 in Cape Town, SA

With the support from COHRED Group (Geneva), Aviesan held a session on Health Technology Transfer, as part of the Global Forum 2012. It was of course an opportunity to present HTech4Dev program and progress, but the main purpose of the session was to focus on  the necessary (contextual and pragmatic) elements  for the transfer of health technologies toward Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).  Topics related to health technologies (infrastructure, developmental challenges, market and regulatory acceptance) were presented and discussed.   In addition, boarder topics of intellectual property, jurisdictional approaches, social acceptance and impact were presented and discussed. Thanks to all of our speakers who travelled from far away (Bangladesh, Canada, Europe and Thailand) to share with the audience their experience  in the use of new technologies to fill the gap between developed and under-developed economies. 

During the first part of the session, the orators nicely pictured the great promises of some nano-based technologies as solutions to basic human health problems. Some presenters described regional examples/challenges for the successful implementation and use of tele-medicine. An informative and enlightening lecture given by the President of the European Group on Ethics  who provided some clues on how Africa may better valorize by building an environment prone to protect Africa generated intellectual property. A presentation by WHO (World Health Organization) Assistant Director-General for ‘Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research’ detailed success, and evidenced that local production of therapeutics in Africa can be viable.  Participants from several key organizations were present and contributed to the stimulating discussions.  Representatives from IFPMA (the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Association) and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) illustrated the specificity and challenges to be addressed on health technologies transfer in LMICs. An outstanding presentation was made by the President of the Cameroon Bioethics Initiative who explained on the African social move needed toward the acceptance of these new technologies.   

Prof Carel IJsselmuiden, Director COHRED

Judging from the level of participant’s engagement and discussions (going well beyond the scheduled time, follow-up actions and networking), the session on Health Technology Transfer was a success.  

All these presentations will be made available soon on Forum 2012 website (www.forum2012.org).

Dr Jacques Grassi, Director ITS, Aviesan

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Assistant Director-General

Dr François Hirsch, Aviesan ITS

Prof. Julian Kinderlerer, Cape Town University

Women and child’s health at stake in Cameroon

Prof. Dieudonné Adiogo, vice-dean of Douala Pharmaceutical School is setting up a project dedicated to Women’s Health: Monitoring and treatment of hypocalcemia and anemia on young women in Cameroon.

This project based on a new nano-diagnostic device in development will be conducted in two phases:

Phase 1: test and validation of the new test on 3000 women from the Douala surroundings with limited health care access.

Phase 2: test and implementation of the new test in remote areas of Cameroon with limited health care access.

The project will contribute to improve the women health by supplementing them in Calicum (Ca) and Iron (Fe) when needed. New born and infants will also benefit from the treatment delivered to their pregnant and nursing mothers. With a corrected level of Ca and Fe, women will feel better and will be able to work in better conditions, thus having an improved quality of life. This project should contribute both to women emancipation and life improvement. 

The pilot study will involve students from Douala University:  students in human sciences will contribute to inform, recruit and then follow up on women participating in the study; students in biology will withdraw the blood samples, perform the newly designed test in comparison to the available method and be also in charge of the data processing. A physician will be responsible for clinical examination and treatment of the patients.

After validation of the new diagnostic device in these previous steps, it will be tested for validation in other areas of Cameroon under various climate conditions. Management and continuation of this part of the project will be discussed with health authorities of the country and with WHO representatives to disseminate this new approach to other African countries.

Session moved to Wed April 25th

Please, note that our session will take place on 

Wednesday April 25th 

from 13:30 to 17:00.

The program remains the same!

Thanks for understanding!

Towards Forum 2012!

Our Institute has been working with COHRED for one year on the MDGs and health technologies issues. This led us to contribute to their COHRED-GFHR Forum 2012 to be held in Cape Town, South Africa April 24-26. 

This great event will bring together people from various backgrounds and countries: scientists, international institution and civil society representatives, NGOs, health authorities… around 3 themes:

• Theme 1: Improving and increasing investments in research and innovation
• Theme 2: Networking and partnership for research and innovation
• Theme 3: Creating environment that support research and innovation

Aviesan Session – April 25^th 2012

Theme 3: Creating environments that support R&I “Challenges and Successes in the Transfer of technology to low and middle income countries”

On Thursday April 25^th, the Institute of Health Technologies, part of Aviesan, will lead a session which will examine the challenges and successes of transferring technology to LMICs . This will be also the opportunity to give an update on HTech4Dev, the international initiative led by the Institute for Health Technologies.

13:30	Welcome
	François HIRSCH, Aviesan Introduction
Part 1 – Technologies overview
13:40	Nanotechnologies for Health François BERGER, Aviesan Nano-medicine: new business models on high tech medical devices Rome JUTABHA, National Innovation Agency, Thailand Nano-Medicine: The Potential Versus The Pitfalls – A Clinician’s Perspective Conor BURKE, Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, Ireland Development of Point-of-Care Diagnostic Platforms for Applications in Global Health
14:30	Telemedicine Bram RAMJIAWAN, Saint-Boniface Hospital, Canada The Canadian model Zakir M. SIKDER, Telemedicine Reference Center Ltd., Bangladesh The Bangladeshi model
15:00-15:30	Market Place - Coffee Break - Priority Setting Café
Part 2 – Intellectual Property Issues and Technology Transfer
15:00	Keynote speech Julian KINDERLERER, Cape Town University, E.G.E. Brussels IP Issues in the context of LMICs
15:50	Health Technologies for Development François HIRSCH, Aviesan  Health Technologies for Development (HTech4Dev initiative) Marie-Paule KIENY, WHO Assistant Director-General  ‘ Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research’ Local production in support of access to medical technologies
16:15	Round Table : Specificity and challenges to be addressed on health technologies transfer in LMICs Chairman: Jacques GRASSI, CVT Sud, Aviesan; Guests: Konji SEBATI, WIPO – Mario OTTIGLIO, IFPMA Associate Director, Public Affairs & Global Health – Julian KINDERLERER, Cape Town University, E.G.E. Brussels
Part 3 – Civil Society Perspectives
17:30	Keynote speech Godfrey TANGWA, Yaounde University, Cameroon Transfer of Technology: telemedicine and nanotechnologies in the African context, prospects and challenges
18:00	End of the session

We are looking forward to meeting you there and discussing these crucial issues for development with you!

Interesting links:

• Forum 2012 whole program
• Topics Theme 3
• Active blogs

Meeting with the Sanofi-Espoir Foundation

We had the pleasure to meet with the Foundation Managing Director and the Partnership Program Senior Manager to present our initiative and the projects we support.

Founded on October 2, 2010, by Sanofi-Aventis Group, the Sanofi Espoir Corporate Foundation is tasked with supporting actions of general interest in the healthcare field on an international scale.

The Foundation's mission is to contribute to reducing health inequalities, particularly among the most needy, by focusing on key issues in prevention, training and access to care.

Talking about health and development with them made us realize how important it is to work on the project construction to come up with strong partnerships between the technology implementation and the local network to be set up around the targeted population.

Sanofi-Espoir Foundation could thus support projects aiming at improving access to healthcare and involving community healthcare people. These projects actually need to follow strict criteria to be considered: see their Guidelines to select projects. Projects involving vaccines or medicines will be be  considered by Sanofi Coporate or Sanofi-Pasteur.

As far as our HTech4Dev Initiative is concerned, two projects might fit in the Foundation scope:

• Cameroon: Anemia and Calcemia monitoring and treatment for adult women in Douala area.

• Senegal: Medical Record System

To allow these projects to meet the Foundation criteria, for each we have established a multi-disciplinary steering committee with 2 clear tasks:
-       helping to identify the best relevant technology;
-       helping to present a solid structure with an active local healthcare network aiming at  facilitating the social acceptance of the new devices.

Focus on Senegal

Prof. Mbayang Ndiaye Niang is setting up a project in Senegal as part of the Health Ministry Telemedicine Office objectives, one of the projects HTech4Dev decided to support. Their goal is to implement an e-health system in Senegal which should allow a broade and better access to health. One aspect of this ambitious project is the setting up of an electronic medical records system for patients and doctors in order to cope with the accessibility issues and the frequent people displacements in the country. It is also important to link telemedicine (teleconsulation, teleradiology etc…) to the medical records. This appears to be a realistic solution to allow a virtual bridge between the remote districts and the hospital in big cities. As far as technology is concerned, different solution already have been considered: the specifications need to be clarified regarding the users’ needs and compliance as well as the data management.

A steering committee has been formed to build up the project and address some the main issues of the project:

• Laurent Braak, MEDES, Toulouse, France
• Philippe Gesnouin, INRIA, Aviesan
• Laurence Esterle, CNRS, Aviesan
• Guillaume Delapierre, LETI, CEA
• Alexandra Monteiro, Brazil, who recently joined the team to strengthen the telemedicine aspects of the project.

There is actually a lot of work to do to organize the different tasks, plan the different steps and bring together the various stakeholders. For now, Orange-Sonatel and AMREF are the most helpful supports to start this project. The steering committee is thus working on the different work packages of the project to prioritize them and build them as separate subprojects to be funded on their own:

• Patient ID
• Epidemiological surveillance
• Patient electronic records
• Telemedicine
• Training

We have also considered creating an official structure to lead this project to address the various pivotal issues raised by this project (ethics, data management, technological challenges…).

WAHA is driving a similar pilot study on this area in Western Africa, their experience and conclusion may be complementary to our project.

Aviesan partners meeting

We met with the Aviesan partners involved in this initiative to evaluate the progress made on the projects. We actually sent them (Gambia, Cameroon, Senegal, Gabon-Fougamou) recommendation to improve their initial project, make it more focused on technology transfer and attractive for funding.

Representatives from the Pasteur Institute, IRD and INRIA noted that the technological aspects have not been yet considered as the PIs are still in the first phase of setting up their project in a population with specific needs to analyze.

We also discussed about a potential frame for our initiative. In France, several CVTs (Thematic Valorization Consortia) are being sat up to enhance technology transfer in strategic fields. The “CVT Aviesan” will focus on health technologies, the “CVT for South” will focus on technology transfer to the South. If one of our projects fits in one of the CVTs strategy, it could then be supported by a team dedicated to technology transfer and IP issues.

Happy holidays!

As we are leaving for a few days off for the holidays, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year, filled with joy in your lives and success for your projects!

Meeting with the NGO ‘Women and Health Alliance International’ (WAHA)

We met with Dr. Sinan Khaddaj (Secretary General) and Cheikh Mbaye (Information Technology and Web Manager) in Paris on December 15th.

‘Women and Health Alliance International (WAHA) is an international non-profit, non-governmental organisation based in France that has been launched by Her Highness Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al-Nahyan, with the over-arching goal of addressing maternal and neonatal health in disadvantaged communities throughout the world.’

We shared a lot on their experience and their vision: new technologies are actually a great opportunity to improve health in poor areas. WAHA believes that they have to evaluate the people needs first, then see how to meet them and eventually use new technologies to accelerate and improve the solutions.

Here is a typical example of what has been achieved in Senegal together with the Fistula Fondation: they have brought ambulance to the villages within a 70 km radius of district hospital to allow the sick women to be taken care of as soon as possible.

WAHA also has projects in the field of telehealth (telediagnostic, electronic medical records) and in the implementation of new devices (e.g. they are currently looking for reliable and fast technologies to determine blood antigens when emergency transfusion is needed).

For all these reasons, WAHA and HTech4Dev will find opportunities to set up projects together in these areas.