HELINA 2018: Call for Papers

The 2018 edition of the Pan-African health informatics conference (HELINA) is scheduled from 3rd – 8th December 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference will be hosted by the Kenya Health Informatics Association (KeHIA) and will focus on how technology is being used to strengthen health systems in the African Region. HELINA conferences have been known to provide a platform for both academia and industry to showcase results of scientific research and industry practice.

Issues of specific interest are development and implementation of integrated e-Health plans and policies that enable capacity building for eHealth professionals, improving quality of health information and promotion of the meaningful use of health data to support and ground decision-making, improving access to essential medical supplies through improved supply chain and logistics, development of sustainable health information systems for service delivery and innovative health financing models that improve access to health.

The role of digital health in health surveillance systems particularly due to emerging health threats including Non-Communicable Diseases, and therefore, the core participatory role of the client in detection, response, treatment and care. Special attention will be paid to the role of e-Health in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) voted by the UN in September 2015 and more specifically to goal 9, target 9c which aims to « Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by 2020 ».

The following topics have therefore been chosen as the main themes for the conference:

● National and Regional e-Health Strategies and Policies
● Health Information Systems Interoperability
● Quality (Continuous Quality Improvement) and use of health data and systems
● Human capacity building for e-Health
● Application of technology in supply chain management
● Sustainable ICT-solutions for health service delivery
● Technology enabled health financing

But many other subjects can also be addressed in this conference:

● Health facility management information systems
● Personal Health Records information systems
● Health Information Exchange (HIE)
● Internet of Things and Wearables
● Point of care information management solutions
● Health informatics standards
● Mobile health
● Health financing information management
● Health care research informatics
● Health systems monitoring and evaluation
● Decision support systems (for low resource settings)
● Biomedical devices integration
● Medical imaging and radiology information systems
● Laboratory information systems
● Pharmacy management information systems
● Data mining and Big Data Analytics
● Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The organizers of HELINA 2018 welcome original presentations in the following categories and encourage submissions for the Nursing Informatics session:

Papers may be submitted in English or French and should not have been submitted to other conferences or journals. All papers will be subject to a double blind peer-reviewed evaluation and accepted full research papers will be published in a special edition of the Journal of Health Informatics in Africa(http://www.jhia-online.org). Accepted work in progress papers and case studies/experience papers will be electronically published in the conference proceedings with ISBN number on the HELINA website. For a paper to be published, at least one of the authors must register for the conference and present the accepted paper.

The HELINA online paper submission system on http://conf.helina-online.org/index.php/2018/oct2018/about/submissions must be used. The paper submission template found on the website, provides detailed instructions for authors aligned with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/manuscript_1prepare.html). In case you encounter any difficulties in using the electronic submission system, please contact the HELINA 2018 technical team at [email protected].

Important dates:

● Paper submission deadline: 31st May, 2018
● Paper acceptance notification: 15th July, 2018
● Papers ready for publication deadline: 15th September, 2018
● Conference dates: 3rd – 8th December 2018

Registration details include:

Payments will be done in two ways namely: Bank and M-Pesa. For more information on payment,follow the links below.
Bank payment
M-pesa payment

For more information, please contact:

● Chair of the Conference: Ghislain Kouematchoua, [email protected]
● Chair of the local organizing committee: Steven Wanyee, [email protected]
● Chair of the Scientific Committee: Nicky Mostert-Phipps, [email protected]
● Co-chairs of the Scientific Committee: [email protected]