Hi everyone, At the Change meeting this week, Walter Curioso from Biomedical and Health Informatics will be giving a talk entitled mHealth: The opportunity of mobile technologies to support HIV adherence in Peru at noon in CSE 303. Please the description below. Before the meeting, from 11:20-12:00 in CSE 303, the ICTD reading group will discuss "ICTD State of the Union: Where have we Reached and Where are we Headed." Joyojeet Pal, one of the authors, will be at the discussion. http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/590f/09sp/ictd09/ ---------------------------- Speaker: Walter H. Curioso, MD, MPH PhD student. Biomedical and Health Informatics, School of Medicine, University of Washington; Research Professor, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru "mHealth: The opportunity of mobile technologies to support HIV adherence in Peru" There is a mounting interest in the field of mHealth - the provision of health-related services via mobile communications. mHealth projects are operating in a wide variety of developing countries and providing demonstrable impacts. Documented results - in both the developed and developing world - reveal that mobile technology improves the efficiency of healthcare delivery. Due to its nascent stage, mHealth presents a tremendous opportunity to create a global facilitation body, enabling maximum innovation and impact on global health. In this talk, Dr. Curioso will describe and present initial results of Cell-POS, a mHealth project that is currently being conducted in Peru. Innovative approaches using information technologies such as cell phones are needed to increase adherence to antiretroviral treatment for people with HIV/AIDS. Cell-POS, funded by the NIH grant R01TW007896, will develop and evaluate a computer-based intervention using cell phones to enhance adherence to antiretroviral therapy and support of HIV transmission risk-reduction among adult HIV- positive patients in Peru. The specific aims of Cell-POS are to: 1) Conduct formative research to assess culturally-specific behavioral messages to be included in the computer-based system; 2) Develop and test an interactive computer-based system using cell phones to enhance adherence to antiretroviral treatment and to deliver HIV transmission risk reduction messages; 3) Evaluate the impact of the system on antiretroviral adherence and sexual risk behaviors. Walter H. Curioso is a research professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. Dr. Curioso received his MD from Cayetano University, his MPH from the University of Washington, and he is currently a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the University of Washington. He is developing a medical informatics and global health curriculum at Cayetano University. His research focus is on how to use technology, especially mobile health, to promote global health in developing countries. His latest projects, in collaboration with UW faculty, involve using cell phones to support HIV antiretroviral adherence, using personal digital assistants to assess sexual risk and antiretroviral medication adherence among HIV patients in Lima, and using cell phones and the Internet to develop a real-time surveillance system for adverse events. He has written more than 75 articles in health informatics and information technology, evidence-based medicine, public health in developing countries, and clinical medicine. Dr. Curioso can be reached at: wcurioso@u.washington.edu and his personal website is available at: http://faculty.washington.edu/wcurioso/ _______________________________________________ change mailing list change@change.washington.edu http://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change