News: Jun 23, 2020
Every day, more than 800 women die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. The vast majority of them, 94% in 2017, are in low- and lower middle-income countries. Most of these deaths are preventable. (1)
Improving maternal health care is a global priority explains Hawa Nyende at University of Gothenburg, who presented her work at the third GSF webinar, on 16 June 2020. The webinar focused on IT for innovation and job creation in low- and middle-income countries.
Reducing the maternal mortality rate is the first goal within SDG 3 – good health and well-being for all – from almost 500 to 70 per 100,000 live births until 2030. (2)
“Information Technology, IT, can support a change towards a more value-based system of healthcare”, Hawa says and adds that IT previously has been used primarily to collect and aggregate data.
In low-resource settings, like in Uganda where Hawa spends half of her time at her home university Makerere, a health-related IT structure could include the support for integration and accessibility of resources. Knowledge and skills are shared also with non-professionals who then become important parts of a value- based health care system.
“My research advocates a shift from provider-centered care to care that involves multiple actors”, Hawa Nyende says. “IT triggers co-creation by re-creating relationships and transforming capacities among actors”.
Hawa Nyende recently successfully defended her PhD in applied IT as a researcher in the BRIGHT project, which is a Sida-funded collaboration between University of Gothenburg and Chalmers in Sweden and Makerere and Mbarara universities in Uganda.
“The aim is to collaboratively increase ICT innovations to facilitate social economic growth in Uganda and to improve the culture of developing ICT solutions”, explains Michel Chaudron, professor in software engineering at Chalmers and GU and project coordinator for the BRIGHT project.
However, Michel and his colleague at Makerere, Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha, emphasise that BRIGHT is not just an IT project.
“Technology alone cannot make it. You need the experts to make an impact”, says Engineer Bainomugisha.
The webinar was the third in a series introducing various aspects of collaborative research with partners in low- and middle-income countries, arranged by Global Sustainable Futures, GSF, at Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development (GMV). GMV is the joint platform for sustainability research and education at Chalmers and University of Gothenburg.
