Dear all, I hope the final event of the "Breaking Boundaries? Series" will of interest to some of you. We will be live streaming the seminar today for those who cannot attend in person: http://breakingboundariesoxford.org/?page_id=414 Best wishes, --- Daniel Villar Onrubia Oxford Internet Institute. University of Oxford daniel.villaronrubia@oii.ox.ac.uk http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=170 @villaronrubia ************************ *ICT for Development: Healthcare perspectives*. Thursday 13th March 2014 17:00 - 18:30 Seminar Room G/H, Department of Education, 15 Norham Gardens<http://breakingboundariesoxford.org/?page_id=50> This seminar will examine the notion that technologies can contribute to healthcare development initiatives in developing countries and explore the challenges associated with such approaches. *Dr Niall Winters* *Reader in Learning Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab <http://www.lkl.ac.uk/> (LKL)* In this talk, Niall Winters will present his current ESRC/DFID-funded research (see: http://www.mchw.org) on the design and implementation of mobile learning interventions to support the training of healthcare workers in Kenya. He will discuss how the project has sought to determine how mobile technologies can help address the boundaries to participation in learning faced by healthcare workers and their trainers. Dr. Niall Winters is a Reader in Learning Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab <http://www.lkl.ac.uk/> (LKL), Institute of Education<http://www.ioe.ac.uk/> , University of London <http://www.lon.ac.uk/> and Deputy Head of the Department of Culture, Communication and Media<http://www.ioe.ac.uk/research/departments/56588.html>. His main research interest is in the participatory design of mobile interventions for medical and healthcare training. The current focus of this research is two-fold: supporting the training of Kenyan community health volunteers in child development and investigating the use of mobile technology to support postgraduate medical education in London teaching hospitals. Niall is a member of the Strategy Planning Group of the London International Development Centre <http://lidc.org.uk/> and of the TEL Scoping and Review Group of Health Education England <http://hee.nhs.uk/>. Niall was previously a RCUK Academic Fellow<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/acfellow/info.asp> at the LKL and was Programme Director for the MA in Education & Technology and Programme co-Director of the MSc in Learning Technologies. He holds a PhD in Computer Science <http://www.cs.tcd.ie/> (2002) from the University of Dublin, Trinity College <http://www.tcd.ie/> and a BSc (D.Hons) in Computer Science and Experimental Physics (1997) from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth <http://www.may.ie/>. His PhD<http://www.lkl.ac.uk/niall/nwdis/> addressed how to store and search large datasets of images. The primary application was vision-based mobile robot navigation. He has held visiting research positions with the Everyday Learning Group at Media Lab Europe<http://medialabeurope.org/> in Dublin, and the Computer Vision Lab <http://vislab.isr.ist.utl.pt/> at Instituto Superior Tecnico <http://www.ist.utl.pt/> in Lisbon. *Marco Haenssgen* *DPhil Candidate in International Development, University of Oxford* Marco's presentation will shift the focus from health workers to the potential recipients of mobile-phone-based health services. Focusing on upstream elements of mHealth, Marco will explore patterns of mobile phone use and healthcare-seeking behaviour, drawing on fieldwork insights from rural India (Rajasthan) and China (Gansu). The evidence suggests that common assumptions of mHealth proponents are easily violated; that is, mobile phone ownership is not ubiquitous and does not necessarily reflect mobile phone use, people do not necessarily share mobile phones freely amongst each other, they are not necessarily keen and excited technological learners, and they do develop mobile phone-aided coping strategies that may compete with mhealth. While both contexts offer, at least in theory, the potential for mobile technology to break boundaries, the presentation will emphasise the importance of understanding upstream factors of mHealth *before* deploying technological solutions in order to provide effective solutions and to avoid the potential exacerbation of healthcare inequities.