and Biomedical Health Informatics Lecture Series Tuesday, May 26, 2009 12:00 - 12:50 p.m., Room T-498 Walter H. Curioso, MD, MPH
PhD student, Biomedical and Health Informatics, School of Medicine University of Washington, Seattle 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 CellPOS are to: 1) Conduct focus groups to assess culturally-specific messages behavioral 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, MD, MPH, 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 ...