Best practice guidance for creation and management of innovations in health care and information and communications technologies

Governments and publics in Europe and around the world have turned to innovation in response to the manifold economic, environmental, and societal challenges we are facing. However, innovations often end up in what is popularly termed as the “valley of death” between upstream creation and downstream product development and implementation. Consequently, the benefits of innovation do not always reach the citizens. In addition, critically informed governance of innovations matter because it allows steering of innovations in response to the values and end points desired by society. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed the rise of digital health and new information and communications technologies (ICTs). The pandemic underscored the need for innovation governance between global North and the global South. We report and discuss, in this study, the development of the innXchange innovation wheel to improve innovation creation and management, using a case study of cooperation between Europe and Africa. The innovation wheel offers best practice guidance and framework to build capacity for innovation dimensions such as partnership mobilization, evaluation, and monitoring, not to mention innovation literacy. The framework emphasizes active engagement of all key stakeholders from the very beginning, also referred to as “systematic early dialog.” We propose the incorporation of systematic early dialog as the best practice guidance in global South and global North cooperation for health care and ICT innovation. The framework is a novel instrument to help overcome the current barriers in planetary health innovation management and consequently, bring breakthrough discoveries in ICTs and innovative ideas to the people.This work and data originate, in part, from the doctoral thesis of Sebastian Schee Genannt Halfmann, supervised by Angela Brand at Maastricht University, and were, in part, published previously only as a PhD thesis (2019).The ERA-net ERAfrica project innXchange has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (The Netherlands), The Department of Science and Technology (South Africa), The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Kenya), and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany).http://www.liebertpub.com/overview/omics-a-journal-of-integrative-biology/43hj2022Informatic

Incorporating the OS development process in the development of CD/IT curricular: a case for capacity building for the knowledge economy

Paper presented at ICT conference of 2008. Theme : ICT's Role towards a Knowledge Economy.Paper presented at ICT conference of 2008. Theme : ICT's Role towards a Knowledge Economy

Best Practice Guidance for Creation and Management of Innovations in Health care and Information and Communications Technologies

Governments and publics in Europe and around the world have turned to innovation in response to the manifold economic, environmental, and societal challenges we are facing. However, innovations often end up in what is popularly termed as the “valley of death” between upstream creation and downstream product development and implementation. Consequently, the benefits of innovation do not always reach the citizens. In addition, critically informed governance of innovations matter because it allows steering of innovations in response to the values and end points desired by society. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed the rise of digital health and new information and communications technologies (ICTs). The pandemic underscored the need for innovation governance between global North and the global South. We report and discuss, in this study, the development of the innXchange innovation wheel to improve innovation creation and management, using a case study of cooperation between Europe and Africa. The innovation wheel offers best practice guidance and framework to build capacity for innovation dimensions such as partnership mobilization, evaluation, and monitoring, not to mention innovation literacy. The framework emphasizes active engagement of all key stakeholders from the very beginning, also referred to as “systematic early dialog.” We propose the incorporation of systematic early dialog as the best practice guidance in global South and global North cooperation for health care and ICT innovation. The framework is a novel instrument to help overcome the current barriers in planetary health innovation management and consequently, bring breakthrough discoveries in ICTs and innovative ideas to the people.This work and data originate, in part, from the doctoral thesis of Sebastian Schee Genannt Halfmann, supervised by Angela Brand at Maastricht University, and were, in part, published previously only as a PhD thesis (2019).The ERA-net ERAfrica project innXchange has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (The Netherlands), The Department of Science and Technology (South Africa), The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Kenya), and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany).http://www.liebertpub.com/overview/omics-a-journal-of-integrative-biology/43hj2022Informatic

The Creation and Management of Innovations in Healthcare and ICT: The European and African Experience

The purpose of the study was to gain new insights into innovation systems by comparing state-of-the-art of existing approaches of innovation creation and innovation management in healthcare and ICT. It is unique, in that it compares countries in Africa with countries in Europe in order to identify similarities and differences regarding the creation and management of innovations. The main similarity is that early dialogue between different stakeholders was underrepresented during the whole innovation process in all countries. Our results also indicated that the various stakeholders often work in silos. The main difference was that the countries face problems at different stages of the innovation process. Whereas European countries face more problems in the innovation creation process, African countries experience difficulty sustaining and managing innovation. To overcome barriers, we suggest the application of systematic early dialogue between all key stakeholders.The project innXchange was funded by ERA-net ERAfrica. The ERAfrica project innXchange received funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technology, and development and demonstration, under grant agreement No. 266603. This work was supported by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; The Department of Science and Technology, South ­Africa; The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Kenya; and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp/?Aktion=JournalAims&ProduktNr=224224hj2020Informatic

When technology precedes regulation: the challenges and opportunities of e-pharmacy in low-income and middle-income countries

The recent growth of medicine sales online represents a major disruption to pharmacy markets, with COVID-19 encouraging this trend further. While e-pharmacy businesses were initially the preserve of high-income countries, in the past decade they have been growing rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Public health concerns associated with e-pharmacy include the sale of prescription-only medicines without a prescription and the sale of substandard and falsified medicines. There are also non-health-related risks such as consumer fraud and lack of data privacy. However, e-pharmacy may also have the potential to improve access to medicines. Drawing on existing literature and a set of key informant interviews in Kenya, Nigeria and India, we examine the e-pharmacy regulatory systems in LMICs. None of the study countries had yet enacted a regulatory framework specific to e-pharmacy. Key regulatory challenges included the lack of consensus on regulatory models, lack of regulatory capacity, regulating sales across borders and risks of over-regulation. However, e-pharmacy also presents opportunities to enhance medicine regulation—through consolidation in the sector, and the traceability and transparency that online records offer. The regulatory process needs to be adapted to keep pace with this dynamic landscape and exploit these possibilities. This will require exploration of a range of innovative regulatory options, collaboration with larger, more compliant businesses, and engagement with global regulatory bodies. A key first step must be ensuring that national regulators are equipped with the necessary awareness and technical expertise to actively oversee this e-pharmacy activity