Turning the Alley of Information Exchange in Developing Countries to the Super Highway

1. Turning the Alley of Information Exchange in Developing Countries to the Super Highway 1

2. This lecture is dedicated on behalf of Supercourse Team to people around the world who are entitled to receive updated quality health services. By: Ali Ardalan, Kourosh Holakouie Naeini, Ali Eghtesadi, Eugene Shubnikov, EricNoji, Faina Linkov, Sunita Dodani, Rashid Chotani & RonaldE LaPorte 2

3. Information exchange status in developing countries • Equally benefited by Information sharing? • Permanent research communications? • Changing with available new information technologies? • ِِDifficulties of developing countries to send & receive of information? 3

4. Information exchange status in developing countries A Highway or an Alley of Information Sending & Receiving? 4

5. Information exchange status in developing countries Sending: a Highway or an Alley? • Almost 25% of the world's scientists live in developing countries. • These scientists publish less than 3% of the world's papers • Iran publishes 76 medical journals, of which 6 are in English 5

6. Information exchange status in developing countries Sending: a Highway or an Alley? • Publication involves two major components, submission and, the judgment • Both the submission rate and acceptance rate for developing countries are considerably lower than what is expected. 6

7. Information exchange status in developing countries Receiving: a Highway or an Alley? • Our training in developing countries will be outdated in short time • The high speed of science generation in the world • Ever changing health pattern in the communities with a lot of unanswered questions • Not enough access to high cost publications, pioneer scientists, and insufficient local experts 7

8. Information exchange status in developing countries Receiving: a Highway or an Alley? • Subscribing to the Science costs $295/year & for the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and the BMJ over $400 • In many developing countries, the per capita income is $300 • A medical library in the US subscribes to about 3000 journals, whereas the Nairobi Medical School Library, receives only 20 journals. 8

9. Information exchange status in developing countries Receiving: a Highway or an Alley? • Our populations have the right to be treated based on up to date knowledge of health practice and management. • Otherwise what do you think about the portion of morbidity and mortality, which we would be responsible for? “People being killedby their health experts!!” 9

10. Objective: In this lecture we try to introduce the applications of a health e-learning technique, Supercourse, for improving mutual, updated, information exchange between developed and developing countries. 10

11. What is Supercourse? • Funded by NLM & NIH • Managed by a team of public health graduates based in Pittsburgh and a webmaster who lives in Siberia! • Freely available online library of about 1900 online PowerPoint lectures • Some lectures are multilingual in 14 languages • Written by members of Global Health Network (GHN)of 15,000 scientists including six Nobel Prize winners 11

12. What is Supercourse? • 44 mirror sites world wide • Distribution of 7500 CD in 118 countries and to ask everybody to copy it and spread around • The latest edition of the CD contains over 1000 Epidemiology lectures 12

13. What is the idea of Supercourse? • It emerged as the rapidly developing world of information and technology started to dominate the life • The old formats of information recording and sharing were no longer meeting the demands of the modern world 13

14. Simple concept of Supercourse: “To improve the teaching of epidemiology, global health and the Internet in medical, veterinary, nursing schools one can improve the lectures” 14

15. How Supercourse is being presented? • Hypertext Comic Book to get rid of the boring traditional presentations • Web-based icon-driven format lectures with PowerPoint, graphic presentation and text • Teachers and students can go deep through hyperlinks 15

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20. How Supercourse works? 20

21. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse teaches the teachers • Like a teaching software package for the teachers of students • It offers teachers an updated source of information, just a click away • Teachers can easily bring it to the class and share it 21

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23. How Supercourse works? • Revolutionizes the research communications • Redesign the mode of informationtransfer • Benefiting from all features of multimedia communication compared with electronic journals • Practically summoning all health scientists to the electronic commons to share the harvest of knowledge 23

24. How Supercourse works? • Nothing is impossible in the Supercourse cyberspace • Death of Distance • Permit scientist and lecturers to “chat” in real time, to present lectures in classes thousands of miles away 24

25. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse tackles the information deficiency • Lack of health information can lead to a massive tragedy • Big concerns: “To tackle the Information deficiency in developing countries” • The greatest challenge :“Reaching the last mile" • People as “Microinformation brokers” 25

26. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse improves the quality of health services faster than journals • Just in time feedback from the world renowned scientists • To improve the quality of health services regarding the issue of time and efficiency • Fairer democracy on productivity and health information dissemination 26

27. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse freely benefits all • The same concept of “Freeware” or “Open source software” • Free user friendly library • Unlimited access to information Free of charge for every body with every level of knowledge and every level of financial capability world wide 27

28. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse: not only a distance education • Prominent difference with distance learning: • Breaking down the barriers between students & teachers • Not a substitute for existing educational model but a teaching-support system that provides a wide range of high level lectures by experts in every field 28

29. How Supercourse works? • Go faster than the SARS virus goes and Bam earthquake kills more • JIT lectures: Fantastic and special applications • Blossoming when a new event happens around the world • Enormous potential to reduce fear and save lives • Step by step live education that how a disease appeared, how investigated and how controlled 29

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34. How Supercourse works? • Supercourse & the original philosophy of Olympic • Encouraging people to be physically active and healthy • Not merely competition of a few professional athletes • To integrate the Olympic ideas plus the knowledge of the science of physical activity and health 34

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38. Providing an opportunity to contact Olympic Committee around the world to make them more physically active and bring the Olympic idea and knowledge to the community! 38

39. Conclusion: • Urgent need of information sharing emphasized by the ever changing world of science • Developing countries benefits from modern information technology • Supercourse greatly benefited the developed countries too • Supercourse ability to turn the alley of information exchange to the Super highway 39

40. Finally, the main winner of Olympic competition between scientists and speed of information explosion should be people around the world. 40

41. You are most welcome to Global Health Network & Please join us at: www.pitt.edu/~super1 41