Yaounde, Cameroon – Kristin Pascual, Coordinator of the openIMIS Regional Hub in Asia, represented AeHIN at the openIMIS Community Meeting held on June 6-7, 2023.
In the community meeting, Pascual presented about AeHIN’s work, such as the Mind the GAPS Framework, digital health convergence workshops, and openIMIS community activities within the region.
Through the participation of Pascual, AeHIN also co-led an openIMIS community capacity-building session with Dr. Sylvia Mwelu of the Kenya Health Informatics Association (KEHIA). KEHIA is hosting the newly formed openIMIS regional hub in Africa on behalf of Health Informatics in Africa (HELINA) – the Pan African Health Informatics Association.
In the session, Pascual and Mwelu facilitated a focus group discussion validating participants’ expectations in joining openIMIS communities of practice, topics of interest, and preferred communication channels. They collectively developed an action plan based on identified challenges through this discussion. Most of the challenges discussed were related to digital health governance, which calls for a better messaging/articulation of investing in digital health solutions like openIMIS when talking to government officials.
While most of the delegation was from Africa, openIMIS implementers from Nepal also participated.