November 2009 Vol.

1 Issue 8

TEKTIC
HOLIDAY
WRAP:
WHAT DO THESE
ICONS REPRESENT?

IN THIS ISSUE:
Page 2 -FOREWORD FROM THE STEERING COMMITTEE - Page 3 - TEKTIC
UNWRAPPED - Page 4 - INTERVIEW WITH DR.ANTOINE GUIESSBUHLER - Page 6 - NEW MEMBER
PROFILE: YOLANDA LIMAN - Page 7 - NEWS in eHEALTH - Page 7 - CLIP OF THE MONTH - Page 7 - THE
2.0 FACTOR: MUSINGS OF A HYPERCONNECTED WORLD - Page 7 - ELLUMINATE - Page 8 - FOCUS
OF THE MIND: WHEN MEDICINE GOT IT WRONG - Page 8...
The TEKTIC Steering Committee would like to wish everyone Happy
Holidays. It is our hope that during this holiday season, you will have
the opportunity to sit back, enjoy the company of your friends and
loved ones, and reflect on what a great year 2009 has been. Similarly,
this theme of reflection is also echoed with this issue of the TICr as we
will be looking back at what we have accomplished as a group in 2009
and where we will head in the coming year. The cover illustration
(right) is a representation the key themes that appear in the projects
we have undertaken since the conception of TEKTIC three years ago;
more specifically, these icons represent the 8 top used words that have
been used in our projects. These words resonate what we have set
out to do. Can you guess what the 8 images represent? (see answers
below) Have a Great Holiday Season and see you in the New Year!

Answers from Left to Right: Health, Collaboration, Knowledge

Translation, Evaluation, Innovation,Information and
Communication Technologies, Information, Community

TEKTIC Unwrapped
By Jennifer Cordiero & Andrea Polonjio
Over the past four years, TEKTIC has developed from grant proposal on paper to an active research
collaborative. Made up of academics, health professionals, educators and policy makers, TEKTIC
has contributed to B.C.’s eHealth research landscape in numerous ways. In this article, we
reflect on the past few years to highlight what we have done and where we might go.

Membership:
TEKTIC’s membership represents a diversity of perspectives and professional training. Original members came together
to build a strong human infrastructure to house and support TEKTIC’s multifaceted research program. There were 16
founding members with expertise is technology-enabled knowledge translation (TEKT), health informatics, eLearning
and education, Aboriginal health, pharmacology, interprofessional practice, and eHealth policy. Over this past year
TEKTIC has welcomed new members into the group. The new members have been co-investigators working on
TETKIC projects, partners interested in becoming more involved and students working with TEKTIC researchers. In

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 total 13 new members have been introduced to the TEKTIC
group resulting in new partnerships and exciting ideas.

Research Projects:
As a research unit, the foundational base of TEKTIC has been
developing projects within each of its objectives: ‘human-
technology interface’, ‘technology demonstration’, ‘research
synchronization‘, ‘eHealth evidence based policy translation’
and ‘capacity building.’ Over the past four TEKTIC Call for
Proposals, 34 individual projects have been supported. Many of
these projects cut across the five TEKTIC objectives and have
spurred new directions. In the work done over the past three
years, the two new predominant themes to emerged in this
portfolio are: 1) engagement with the public and Aboriginal
communities with regards to awareness of health issues and the
use of information communication technologies (ICT) in the
area of health care, and 2) the use of electronic communities
of practice for purposes of collaboration between health care
providers, health authorities, medical students, and academics.

Communication and Knowledge Sharing:

In Year 3 time and effort was dedicated to start sharing
some of the work our members had been doing over the
previous two years. In January 2009 we hosted our first of a
series of regular online presentations highlighting TEKTIC-
funded projects. Supported by Elluminate, these online
rounds were open to all members and external partners. Each
session opened with a 20 minute presentation followed
by a discussion period involving the audience. Session
attracted between 7 – 21 participants. Keep an eye open for new details about the upcoming session in January!

The TICr was also introduced in Year 3. This online TEKTIC newsletter has become a strong
communication piece for both TEKTIC members and external partners. Profiling projects and new
members, along with articles and YouTube clips of the latest eHealth trends, the TICr has quickly become
a legacy piece for TEKTIC, providing a snapshot of what we are doing month-to-month.

Solid Directions and Next Steps:

And, as the TEKTIC funding period comes to an end, there is still a lot of activity going on. In the next few moths
as wrap things up, we will be focusing on publishing pieces from some of our past accomplishments and looking
toward the future. We thank you for coming on this journey with us and look forward to where we end up next!

Page 3

Why eHealth/Health Informatics?
How did you end up working within
this area?
I have been punching computer cards
since I was a 13 year-old nerd, using
computers as tools to learn and develop
activities that could not be done
otherwise, first in astronomy, then in
computer games, word processing, and
medical imaging. Eventually, once
Page 4
I completed 2000’s , the creation of a large South-
my medical South network for distance education
studies and my and telemedicine for hundreds of
specialization as care professionals throughout French-
an internist, I was speaking Africa, with the RAFT
able to combine network.
my medical
experience with What was your biggest professional
my computer hurdle?
skills in order to Having to learn, without training, to
develop tools that manage a multidisciplinary team of
aim at helping 100 professionals in charge of designing,
clinicians and developing, deploying and supporting
patients improve the medical information systems at our
the quality, safety 2’200-bed Geneva University Hospitals,
and efficiency of and all the politics that comes with it.
care. Somehow, this is not what you learn
What was as a physician or as a software engineer.
defining moment But it can be fun...
in your career If you weren’t a researcher/ physician/
which led you educator, what would you be/ what
to where you are profession would you be in (ie, what
today? are your other areas of interest)?
Working as a An ethnographer or a photographer,
young physician travelling around the world and getting
in a clinic in the to meet different people and cultures.
slums of Calcutta,
in India, and being What is your one (or two) favorite
exposed to the reality technological development from the
of the world for a majority of the past 10-15 years?
humanity.
Mobile connectivity is really changing
Do date, what do you consider your the way we can use information
biggest professional accomplishment? technology, and enables new forms
of what I call “man-man-machine”
In the 1990’s, the development synergies: fostering better interactions
and deployment of the WizOrder
between groups of people and
computerized provider order entry computer-based systems, delegating to
system (CPOE) at Vanderbilt
these systems what they do better than
University Medical Center. In the humans.
Where do you see technology fitting
in with healthcare 20 years from now?
Technology will be everywhere and
will have therefore disappeared. Many
of the healthcare transactions will
be dematerialized, hopefully leaving
patients and care providers able to focus
on what technology will never be able
to provide: empathy, common sense,
and good clinical practice.
Tell us about RAFT.
In 2000, I was invited by medical
students at the University of Bamako,
Mali, to brainstorm about ways to
de-isolate care professionals sent
in the remote areas of the country,
disconnected from their professional
networks, and unable to continue
learning and get support for dealing
with difficult cases. The idea to use the
internet, then just arriving in sub-
Saharan Africa, became obvious.
The network is now deployed in 15
countries in Africa, providing weekly
continuing education sessions that
are followed by hundreds of care
professionals, many of which in remote
What was your first job?
In the mid 1980’s, working on
an early and somewhat clumsy
PDP-based word processor, as
a junior software engineer for
the now defunct Digital Equip-
ment Corporation, in their
fabulous research center in the
French Riviera.
areas, sometimes from a small cybercafé. obvious that web users would need
Most of the courses are now produced some guidance in order to sort out
and webcast from Africa, by experts the good from the bad and the ugly
in most of the major universities and on health and medical websites. The
teaching hospitals. Teleconsultations HONcode was then created: a label
enable isolated care professionals to attributed to websites that respect eight
access virtual communities of experts ethical criteria, which, when all present,
to help solve difficult cases and make increase the trustworthiness of the
better clinical decisions, and helping to information.
coordinate the evacuation of patients
towards reference hospitals. With 6’500+ websites accredited, and
various tools to improve access to
We aim at scaling up the project and trustworthy medical information in
deploy it in many of the 1000+ district 100+ countries and 30+ languages,
hospitals throughout Africa, in order to HON has become the major player
further support and de-isolate the care in promoting good practices for the
professionals, and bring innovative tools publication of health information, as an
to better support clinical practice (e.g., international NGO, and now mandated
portable ultrasonography with remote by some governments to perform
supervision), and also, in collaboration nation-wide accreditation campaigns.
with the World Health Organization,
to develop public health activities in With the development of Web 2.0, new
order to better coordinate preventive challenges arise and the tools developed
medicine and coordination of care. by HON are evolving to meet them. At
the same time, HON is tackling issues
What about HON? related to globalization, by creating
outposts of its activities, in French- and
The Health On the Net foundation was English-speaking Africa and in Arabic
created in the early days of the World- countries.
Wide-Web, in 1995, when it became
If you were stuck on a PC or MAC?
desert island with only Agnostic. Whatever works best
three things (inanimate for a given task.
objects), what would
they be?
My cello, and one of these
solar-powered satellite internet
link that we deploy in rural
Africa.
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 New Member of the Month:
YOLANDA LIMAN
Yolanda earned a Master of Arts in Environmental
Studies from UBC and a Bachelor of Science in
Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University.
Her interests include working with rural and Aboriginal
communities to: improve their access to relevant,
culturally appropriate health information; application of
research findings towards improving social determinants
of health; and promoting community-university
partnerships to improve health education.
Yolanda is the Aboriginal Community and Engagement
Coordinator at the UBC eHealth Strategy office. The
focus of her research is on improving Aboriginal
health through the exploration of technology enabled
education and community engagement. Specific topics
of interest include cross-cultural knowledge exchange
between academia and communities, capacity building
for digital literacy, research skills training, and youth
engagement.
The Ktunaxa Community Learning Centres (a TEKTIC
funded project) is one of the cornerstone projects under
her portfolio. This project explored how technology can
enhance rural, remote and underserved populations.
The findings of this project have brought a different
perspecitve and have informed many TEKTIC and
UBC eHealth Strategy Office initiatives.
Page 6
CURRENT EVENTS
How Your Cell Phone Can Diagnose Disease
To picture the next-gen microscope, don’t picture a microscope at all. Aydogan
Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the
California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, is adapting cell phones to sample
biological images.
This is no iPhone app. Ozcan, who formed the company Microskia (on
the heels of the UC Berkeley team that developed CellScope), has built a
prototype whose cell phone camera sensor can detect a slide’s contents at a
cellular level--reading, for example, an increase in white blood cell count
that might indicate a new infection or injury. That information can then be
forwarded wirelessly to a lab or hospital.
The brilliance of Ozcan’s design is that magnification is done electronically,
requiring no lens. (CellScope, on the other hand, takes a more conventional
approach as a miniature microscope with expensive lenses.)
Ozcan simply added LEDs to the phone, and those diodes direct light over
the sample, which is analyzed in front of the camera sensor. The resulting
hologram is recorded by the camera as a collection of pixels, and can be
reconstructed through Ozcan’s software into highly detailed images.
The applications for this kind of affordable and mobile device abound.
Screening for malaria is a big one, or monitoring someone’s white blood cell
count throughout chemotherapy.
 Viruses such as HIV and H1N1 are currently too
small to detect at this point, Ozcan told me by phone:
“They are so small compared to the wavelength of
light that their scattering is not going to help. But
there are ways to get around this through optics,
that we are working on.”
When the technology does get there, he says, you
could “photograph” your own nasal swab, upload
it to a Web site that compares images for diagnosis,
and know whether you have the flu without ever
leaving bed. Because let’s face it: the last place
someone with a compromised immune system
should be is a crowded emergency room.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-
10393466-247.html
CLIP OF THE
MONTH
Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!
Source:
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=NywZ70yqtp0t_from=PL&index=5
THE 2.0 FACTOR:
Musings of a
Hyperconnected
World
by Francisco J Grajales III
Topic: mHealth or Telehealth: nexus of the future
One of the biggest perks of being hyperconnected
is experiencing technologies before they massively
pick up (or fail!). Last month, I had the privilege
of attending the ITU’s* World Telecom Forum and
Expo in Geneva ( http://bit.ly/zpKIi ). Held every three years, this event
(twitter hash, #WTC09) is the largest ICT multilateral stakeholder trade show
in the globe. For gadget lovers, you could find anything from Saudi Arabia’s
date yummy-looking USB sticks, to city-wide wifi infrastructure plans, or
4th Generation (4G) and 5G biodegradable mobiles. These phones are the
future of medicine, the nexus of mHealth and telemedicine. Here is why...
At present, both developed and developing member states have a shortage of
healthcare workers, particularly in rural areas. With low access and mobile
penetration rising at an unprecedented rate, these next-generation gadgets
provide the key to telehealth delivery- bidirectional video broadcasting (5G
allows high definition video). Long gone are the days of the purse-size mobiles;
these slick connectivity pieces, come in waterproof, solar-cell-embedded
models where 10 minutes of sunlight will get you 1 minute of talk time.
If I asked how to use YouTube, you would probably answer that it is as
simple as googling** an artist. Now, imagine a rural village in Malawi or
the Yukon. With the right infrastructure, and the eminence of the late start,
we can have illiterate, untrained personnel, learn and perform procedures
with instructions from a different continent. As if that was not enough,
10 dollars of hardware can provide a no-lens light-microscopy kit*** that
allows the phone’s built in 8 megapixel high-resolution camera to recognize
pathogens or even, with remote assistance, diagnose malaria, anemia, or TB
on the spot. Where to next? Our imagination is the limit! Sadly though,
healthcare delivery is not only about the technology, it is about the strategic
deployment of ICT.
* ITU stands for the International Telecommunication’s Union. The United Nation’s body
responsible for telecommunications, electromagnetic spectrum and standards, www.itu.int .
** In case you were wondering, Googling is a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary.
*** Far from Lab? Turn a cellphone into a microscope NYT 2009-11-07 http://bit.ly/25TgTE
Note: If you have comments or suggestions, please visit http://e-publichealth.com and leave a note :o)
Page 7
 Would you
like to have
your project
profiled in
t h e T I C r,
present your
project at an
Check the January TICr or www.TEKTIC.ca
upcoming for the Next Elluminate Session!
Elluminate session, or have an
announcement to make? Please email
Jennifer Cordeiro at Jennifer.c@ubc.ca
for more details.
Frames of Mind is a monthly film event
founded by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, TEKTIC
member, utilizing film and video to promote
professional and community education on
issues pertaining to mental health and illness.
When Medicine Got it Wrong
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - 7:30pm
USA 2009. Directors: Katie Cadigan, Laura Murray
VANCOUVER PREMIERE! Director Katie Cadigan’s name will be familiar to long-
time “Frames of Mind” patrons from People Say I’m Crazy, a film about her brother’s
struggle with schizophrenia, which we presented in 2004. Her heartbreaking encounters
with elderly parents after screenings of that earlier film prompted Katie to make When
Medicine Got It Wrong, a hard-hitting documentary providing historical context for our contemporary mental health care
crisis. In 1974, when it was still accepted medical practice to blame parents for their children’s schizophrenia, a small group of
parents in California were the first to publicly challenge this belief. They formed Parents of Adult Schizophrenics (a forerunner
to the National Alliance on Mental Illness), and openly challenged the medical establishment to recognize the medical nature of
the ailment. Their committed activism led to increased research into the physiological origins of mental illness and significant
changes in how schizophrenia is understood and treated. These battles were waged during a time of deinstitutionalization; mental
hospitals all over North America were being closed, but the community care meant to replace them never materialized. Many
of the severely ill ended up on the streets or in jails. Although these activist parents helped build an important new awareness of
mental illness, a visit to Vancouver’s own Downtown Eastside serves as a strong reminder that government and society have yet
to fully catch up. Colour, Digibeta video.

Post-screening discussion with Joan Nazif and Susan Inman, members of the Family Advisory Committee of Vancouver Community
Mental Health Services, and Dr. William MacEwan, Clinical Professor and Director, Schizophrenia Program, Department of
Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

“Director Philippe Falardeau explores detention-worthy existentialism.”

- Eye Weekly

“The film elicits a wonderful mix of emotions ... a poetic tale of an outrageous artist-as-a-young-boy.”
- Macleans

For more information, tickets, full reviews, and trailers, visit www.framesofmind.ca.

The TICr is Made Possible Through the Partnership of the Following Insitutions: