turning the alley of information exchange in developing countries to the super highway

Turning the Alley of

Information Exchange in

Developing Countries to the

Super Highway

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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, Eric Noji,

Faina Linkov, Sunita Dodani, Rashid Chotani &

Ronald E LaPorte 2

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

Information exchange status in

developing countries

A Highway or an Alley of Information

Sending & Receiving?4

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

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

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 Our training in developing countries will be outdated in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

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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

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 killed by their health experts!!”

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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.

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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 winners11

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 lectures12

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 world13

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

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

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How Supercourse works?

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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

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How Supercourse works? Revolutionizes the research communications

Redesign the mode of information transfer

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

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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

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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

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

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

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

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 controlled29

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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

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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!

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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

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Finally, the main winner of

Olympic competition between

scientists and speed of

information explosion should

be people around the world. 40

You are most welcome to

Global Health Network

&

Please join us at:

www.pitt.edu/~super141