HELINA 2018

Call for papers

The 2018 edition of the Pan-African health informatics conference (HELINA) took place from 3rd – 8th December  2018 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The conference was co-hosted by the Ministry of Health of Kenya in collaboration with Kenya Health Informatics Association (KeHIA), co-chaired by Dr Ghislain Kouematchoua (HELINA President-Elect) and KeHIA’s chairman, Dr Tom Olouch.

The conference was sponsored by several organizations and partners, namely: RTI International, IBMI Moi University, Malteser International, and IntelliSOFT Consulting Limited. Additionally, KeHIA and Kenya’s Ministry of Health co-hosted the conference back-to-back with the OpenMRS Implementers Meeting. Read more →

The conference focused on digital health in health surveillance systems due to emerging health threats such as non-communicable diseases (NCDs); key emphasis was placed on the core participatory role of the client in detection, response, and patient care and treatment.

In the past, HELINA conferences have been known to provide a platform for academia and industry to showcase scientific research and industry practice results.  The 2018 conference covered specific issues of interest such as:

• Development and implementation of integrated e-Health plans and policies that enable capacity building for eHealth professionals.
• How to improve the quality of health information and promote the meaningful use of health data to support ground decision-making.
• How to improve access to essential medical supplies through improved supply-chain and logistics systems.
• The development of sustainable health information systems for service delivery and innovative health financing models that improve access to health.

The conference paid special attention to the role of e-Health in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) voted by the UN in September 2015, and more specifically to goal 9, target 9c, which aims to:

Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by 2020.

The following topics were the main themes for the 2018 conference:

• National and Regional e-Health Strategies and Policies
• Health Information Systems Interoperability
• Quality (Continuous Quality Improvement) and use of health data and systems
• Human capacity building for e-Health
• Application of technology in supply chain management
• Sustainable ICT-solutions for health service delivery
• Technology-enabled health financing

The conference also tackled different subjects across a wide range of topics, such as:

• Health Management Information Systems (HMIS)
• Personal Health Records information systems
• Health Information Exchange (HIE)
• Internet of Things and Wearables
• Point of care information management solutions
• Health informatics standards
• Mobile health
• Health financing information management
• Health care research informatics
• Health systems monitoring and evaluation
• Decision support systems (for low resource settings)
• Biomedical devices integration
• Medical imaging and radiology information systems
• Laboratory information systems
• Pharmacy management information systems
• Data mining and Big Data Analytics
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Additionally, attendees got to present their original submissions under the following categories: (Original paper submissions can be accessed here →)

1. Full research papers (presentation of mature research results, between 5 and 8 pages)
2. Work in progress papers (articles between 5 and 8 pages)
3. Case studies and experience papers (reports on e-Health interventions and implementations or lessons learned, 1 page abstract). The recommended structure of the abstract should include a short introduction, the objective of the intervention and lessons learned from the implementation.

HELINA thanks all the participants who took part in the 2018 conference, including the local organizing committee, for their role in the conference’s success.