Speaker Series: Embracing open source solutions for health emergencies

13 June 2023 18:30 – 20:00 CET

In this fifth instalment of the Speaker Series, we discussed the relevance of Open Source approaches towards digital solutions for health emergency preparedness and response. How can the application of Open Source principles improve public health technologies? What are the challenges and opportunities in “Open Sourcing” digital solutions across the globe? How can communities of Open Source contributors be forged to jointly innovate technologies? How can we ensure the sustainability of Open Source technologies in the space? Dr Yaw Anokwa, Computer Scientist and CEO of ODK, spoke about his journey building ODK as a widely adopted Open Source platform with a growing community of contributors. Dr Hajer Letaief from the National Observatory of New and Emerging Diseases of the Ministry of Health Tunisia provided a country-level perspective on applying Open Source solutions in disease surveillance. She spoke about the digital health policy of the Ministry of Health Tunisia and the piloting phase of the Open Source Surveillance Outbreak Response Management & Analysis System (SORMAS).

The Speaker Series event also served as a public launch event for the WHO Pandemic Hub’s Open Source Programme Office (OSPO). The OSPO is an initiative which supports WHO as well as stakeholders from Member States, partners and academia to collaboratively develop sustainable, innovative, and impactful Open Source solutions for pandemic and epidemic intelligence. The event was co-hosted by the Charité Center for Global Health. Sara Hersey, Director of Collaborative Intelligence, Mala Kumar, Senior Advisor to the WHO OSPO and Dr Alain Labrique, Director of the Department of Digital Health and Innovation at the World Health Organization moderated the session.

Speakers

 

Dr Yaw Anokwa | Speaker

Computer scientist, Open Source specialist, Founder and CEO of ODK

Yaw Anokwa is a computer scientist, serial entrepreneur, and Open Source specialist. He is the founder and CEO of ODK, an Open Source platform that helps researchers, field teams, and M&E professionals collect the data they need to fight disease, poverty, and inequity. His work with ODK as a data collection platform supported WHO Member States and partners in their response to polio outbreaks and in studies to prove the efficacy of various vaccines and measure the global burden of disease. Yaw holds a PhD in Computer Science for building software that improves healthcare delivery in low-resource settings.

 

 

Dr Hajer Letaief | Speaker

Epidemiological Surveillance Unit at the National Observatory of New and Emerging Diseases of the Ministry of Health Tunisia

Dr Hajer Letaief is a medical doctor and assistant professor in epidemiology and public health at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tunis El Manar. She currently works at the National Observatory of New and Emerging Diseases of the Tunisian Ministry of Health. Her expertise lies in infectious disease surveillance, epidemic preparedness and response and field epidemiology. At the observatory, she has been involved in epidemiological surveillance of epidemic diseases (Hepatitis A, West Nile Virus) and is the coordinator of the Tunisian Field Epidemiology Training Programme. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she participated actively in the national response including risk assessment, monitoring as well as various COVID-19 research activities. Dr Hajer Letaief is involved in setting up digital tools for epidemiological surveillance of communicable diseases, and currently serves as the coordinator of the implementation of an integrated digital disease surveillance system with the setting up of SORMAS platform.

 

 

Samuel Mbuthia | Speaker

Lead of the Open Source Programme Office at the WHO Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems

Samuel Mbuthia leads the Open Source Programme Office at the WHO Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems (WSE) which incorporates the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. Before joining WHO in September 2022, Mr Mbuthia has spent many years working on technology in health, leading technical aspects of various projects to develop and deploy care coordination tools for health workers. In recent years, he was leading the Medic’s (formerly Medic Mobile) capacity-building efforts and setting up and heading the Open Source community of practice for the Community Health Toolkit at Medic, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Samuel Mbuthia has a strong engineering and systems development background with a Master of Science from Strathmore University focused on Computer-Based Information Systems.

 

 

Mala Kumar | Moderator

Senior Advisor to the Open Source Programme Office at the WHO Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems

Mala Kumar joined the WHO Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) as a Senior Advisor on Open Source contributor engagement, in May 2023. She is the former Director of Tech for Social Good at GitHub, a Microsoft-owned software company, where she started and led five programs that utilized GitHub's products, platform, communities, and brand to support the United Nations, non-profit organizations, and the wider social sector in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During her time at GitHub, she played a crucial role in the establishment of the WHO Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) in collaboration with the WHO Pandemic Hub team. Prior to that, Mala worked for a decade in the field of technology for international development (ICT4D), serving organizations such as UNICEF and WFP. She was one of the early adopters of UX research and design methodologies within the United Nations system. Mala has joined the WHO as a Senior Advisor to the OSPO, where she will develop new strategies for engaging external contributors and the private sector. She resides in New York City.

 

 

Sara Hersey | Moderator

Director of Collaborative Intelligence at the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence

Sara Hersey joined the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence as the Director of Collaborative Intelligence, at the beginning of 2023. She is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has served in global public health leadership roles over the past two decades with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Bank, and Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL). Her professional experience spans more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean where she has led efforts in outbreak preparedness and response, infectious disease prevention and treatment, strategic planning, policy, financing and program management. At the World Bank, Sara served as a senior advisor on health security and COVID-19. Sara was the first US CDC Country Director in Sierra Leone, leading their Ebola response and establishing the US Government’s Global Health Security Agenda. She was also the US CDC Country Director in South Sudan through the 2013-14 civil war. She has worked as an epidemiologist with the US CDC in Malawi and South Africa, with UNHCR responding to complex emergencies, and with FHI 360 in the Asia Pacific region. Sara Hersey holds a Master of Public Health focusing on epidemiology and complex emergencies from Tulane University and a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College.

 

 

Dr Alain Labrique | Moderator

Director of the Department of Digital Health and Innovation at the World Health Organization

Dr Alain Labrique is the Director of the Department of Digital Health and Innovation at the World Health Organization. He is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative and Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Open Digital Health journal. An infectious disease and population epidemiologist, he served until September of 2022 as Professor and the inaugural Associate Chair for Research in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Labrique has led research in maternal, neonatal, and infant health in resource-limited settings and was recognized as one of the Top 11 mHealth Innovators in 2011. Labrique has authored over 150 publications in high-impact journals, as well as many book chapters and technical reports on Digital Health and Emerging Infectious Diseases. His frameworks for Digital Health remain among the most cited. Labrique has served as a Technical Advisor to several international and global health agencies and Ministries of Health, was the Chair of the WHO Digital Health Guidelines Development Group and was a member of the WHO Digital Health Roster of Experts.