Global HIT Resource Center

The Second LIGHT International Summit meeting was held on October 20, 2004 at the Hay Adams hotel in Washington D.C. Thirty high-level executives from key stakeholder groups participated in this exclusive, invitation-only meeting which featured 14 speakers who are recognized public and private sector experts in the areas of global healthcare, health information technology (HIT) and HIV/AIDS. This gathering was a follow-on to the inaugural LIGHT International Summit meeting held May 14-15, 2004 in Geneva, Switzerland at which leaders representing over 16 nations offered an overview of the current state, key challenges and strategies utilized relating to HIT and infrastructure development in their home countries. The Second International LIGHT Summit meeting on October 20 was focused specifically on generating new and executable ideas around the use of HIT in global HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts.

Meeting participants included government representatives from U.S. and across the world, with officials such as Carolyn Clancy, MD , the Director at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality andRichard Granger, Director General, Information Technology for the National Health Service in the United Kingdom; pioneers in utilizing health information technology to address the needs of developing countries, such as William Tierney, MD, Senior Research Scientist at the Regenstrief Institute and Director of Research for the Indiana University/Kenya Program; and private sector leaders who are interested in supporting a public-private sector collaborative to address HIV AIDS and other challenges in developing countries.

After a brief welcome and introductions from Janet M. Marchibroda, Chief Executive Officer, eHealth Initiative and Executive Director of the eHealth Initiative Foundation and Susan Penfield, Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, participants discussed the following issues:

Overview of the HIV/AIDS global healthcare challenges and public and private sector initiatives launched to address those challenges;
Overview and discussion of current public and private sector initiatives that utilize information technology to address global healthcare challenges;
Innovative Approaches to HIV/AIDS education and awareness challenges; and
Opportunities to build public and private sector partnerships to address global healthcare challenges through information technology (facilitated discussion of all meeting participants)

Key Summit Highlights and Findings

The following are key highlights of Second International LIGHT Summit presentations and discussions:

Perspective on the Magnitude of the HIV/AIDS Challenge

HIV/AIDS is a pandemic with an estimated 5 million people infected with in 2003 alone and 14,000 new infections emerging each day;
The total number of adults and children worldwide living with HIV is 38 million;
60% of the infected dwell in Sub-Saharan Africa;
15 million children living today have been orphaned due to AIDS and one child dies every minute from AIDS.

Call to Action and The Promise of HIT in Combating HIV/AIDS Globally

The opportunities for expanding access to HIV/AIDS treatment and care have never been so great. Given that HIV/AIDS infections and deaths are preventable, world innovators should apply their core capabilities to this global fight and improve the health and security of the global community. Core capabilities could include such things as intellectual capital, sector or industry-specific expertise, training and education capabilities, and access to media exposure or marketing infrastructure.
Tackling the HIV/AIDS challenge requires activism, parterning with global organizations, demonstrating leadership and commitment and the willingness to make investments to achieve improvements. Partnerships can involve companies, national and local governments, non-governmental organizations, non-profits, foundations and other interested constituencies.
Management of HIV/AIDS should be bi-directional, collecting person specific information and distilling it into effective interventions.
HIT has promise for improving HIV/AIDS care with treatment management solutions (systems), software and other tools, particularly, as it relates to outcomes measurement, public health surveillance, anti-retroviral and drug delivery and in addressing new HIV/AIDS education and awareness challenges. Common technology channels for distribution of life-saving information include radio and television, web-based resources, CD ROMS, PDAs, satellite, and the Internet and email

Addressing the global healthcare challenge of HIV/AIDS requires urgent dialogue between developed and developing countries regarding:

How to construct a health information infrastructure to support improved health knowledge and behaviour in communities;
Appropriate international, national and local roles, clarifying in particular what aspects of applications and infrastructure are best procured, managed and tailored at each level and how to balance the applications’ impact with affordability; and
What resources are required, and from where (Global funding bodies; NGOs; national resources)

Principles of knowledge sharing and local empowerment should be incorporated in dialogue.