About PANACeA:

Background/Problem Statement: eHealth can be defined simply as the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in healthcare. eHealth solutions can be applied in many domains including prevention and surveillance, administration, clinical settings, education and health research.  .The main uses of eHealth in developing countries have been to improve access to healthcare services, and enhance the quality of care by making patient data and other relevant information available to the healthcare providers at the point of care. In the developing country context there are specific challenges such as difficulties in communication between healthcare providers working in remote areas and those working in tertiary care hospitals, information transfers at different levels of care, and professional isolation of healthcare providers working in rural areas. eHealth can provide a medium to address these challenges by providing economically and socio-culturally appropriate technology solutions available at different points of care. The biggest problem at this time is the lack of scientific evidence to convince the decision-makers at the institutional and government levels about the benefits of eHealth in the local context, and to prove if one technology is better than the other to address the same problem. PAN Asian Collaboration for Evidence-based eHealth Adoption and Application (PANACeA) is an initiative to generate evidence in the field of eHealth within the Asian context, by forming a network of researchers from developing Asian countries.

Objectives/Research Questions: The primary aim of PANACeA is to create evidence for eHealth in the developing countries of Asia. The specific objectives are to identify: 1) To support a set of multi-country research activities to address the four core research questions; 2) To create a theoretical model for evaluating good practice in eHealth programs in Asia; 3) To build research capacity amongst Asian researchers to evaluate and adopt appropriate eHealth technologies and practices and influence policy and decision-makers; 4) To disseminate research findings widely in the regional and international research communities.

PANACeA will find answers to the following four core research questions: 1) Which eHealth applications and practices have had the most beneficial outcomes on the health of individuals, communities and the improvement of health systems? 2) What are the best ways for ensuring that beneficial outcomes can reach the segment of the population that still doesn’t have adequate access to health services? 3) What is the potential of using new pervasive technologies such as mobile phones / PDAs as tools to make the delivery of health services or information more effective? 4) What types of technologies / applications are best suited to help prepare for, or mitigate the effects of disasters, pandemics and emerging and re-emerging diseases?

Methods: Partners have been identified from countries in Central, South, and South East Asia, who have worked together to identify eight projects to generate evidence for the adoption of technologically, economically and socio-culturally sound eHealth applications in multiple countries. These projects will conduct a detailed needs and situation analysis in the first six months (Phase I), followed by two years of project implementation and research (Phase II). This will be followed by six months of evaluation and reporting (Phase III). Three workshops will be conducted during the course of the project to discuss project related issues and plans. Projects will be supervised and mentored by the Advisory and Monitoring team (AMT) comprising of Project manager from Aga Khan University (AKU), project advisor from University of Calgary, and three other eHealth experts from Asia.  Regular communication, reporting and mentoring of the projects will be done through online-discussion forums and visits by the project manager, deputy project lead, and the members of AMT. Several crosscutting issues have also been identified, which will be investigated in Asian context, and will be included in each of the projects. Evidence generated from these projects will be disseminated to policy makers and decision makers at the institutional and government levels in all Asian countries.

Conclusion: PANACeA offers a unique way of developing evidence in a local context, yet involving a large number of countries and developing new partnerships that may last beyond the duration of this project.