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

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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
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• 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?

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• Information exchange status in developing
  countries
• A Highway or an Alley of Information Sending
  Receiving?

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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  outdated in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.

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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 winners

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• 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

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• 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

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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
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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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