Page 224 - ITU KALEIDOSCOPE, ATLANTA 2019

Session 4: Digital health strategies

S4.1 Invited paper - Towards international standards for the evaluation of artificial intelligence for
health

Markus A. Wenzel, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Germany; and Thomas Wiegand,
Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Healthcare can benefit considerably from advanced information processing technologies, in
particular from machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). However, the health
domain only hesitantly adopts these powerful but complex innovations so far, because any
technical fault can affect people’s health, privacy, and consequently their entire lives. In this
paper, we substantiate that international standards are required for thoroughly validating AI
solutions for health, by benchmarking their performance. These standards might ultimately
create well-founded trust in those AI solutions that have provided conclusive evidence to be
accurate, effective and reliable. We give reasons that standardized benchmarking of AI solutions
for health is a necessary complement of established assessment procedures. In particular, we
demonstrate that it is beneficial to tackle this topic on a global scale and summarize the
achievements of the first year of the ITU/WHO focus group on “AI for Health” that has tasked
itself to work towards creating these evaluation standards.

S4.2 Redesigning a basic laboratory information system for the global south*
Jung Wook Park, Aditi Shah, Rosa I. Arriaga and Santosh Vempala, Georgia Institute of

Technology, United States
Laboratory information systems (LIS) optimize information storage and processing for clinics
and hospitals. In the recent past, developers of LIS for the global south have worked under the
assumption that computing environments will be very limited. However, the computing
resources in the area have been rapidly enriched. This has also changed the expectations that
users have about the LIS interface and functionality. In this paper, we provide a case study of
C4G BLIS that has been in operation for nearly a decade in seven African countries. In two
studies that included 51 participants from three African countries, we redesigned the LIS to
better suit the changing technical landscape and user needs and evaluated the new design. The
study procedure, usability metrics and lessons learned from our evaluation provide a model that
other researchers can use. The findings provide empirical insights that can benefit designers and
developers of LIS in the global south. The results also highlight the need for adding usability
specifications for international standard organizations.
S4.3 #RingingTheAlarm: Chronic "Pilotitis" stunts digital health in Nepal*
Ichhya Pant, George Washington University School of Public Health, United States; and
Anubhuti Poudyal, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences,
United States
Nepal Health Sector Strategy (NHSS) 2015-2020 aspires to leverage digital health to improve
health outcomes for Nepalese citizens. At present, there is a paucity in evidence on digital health
projects that have been implemented in Nepal. This study aims to map past and extant digital
health projects using Arksey and O'Malley's scoping design framework and assess projects using
the World Health Organization (WHO) building blocks of a health systems framework. Our
findings shed light on the current actors in the digital health space, the spectrum of health
services offered, along with opportunities and challenges to move beyond "pilotitis". In total, 20
digital health solutions were identified through our review that were implemented between 1993
to 2017. The momentum for digital health projects in Nepal is sporadic but continuous. Overall,
digital health solutions in Nepal are limited in scope, focus areas, target audiences and
sustainability potential. At the national level, implementation of digital health projects is frayed,
issue and organization-centric, and primarily driven by donor or non-governmental
organizations. Engaging the private sector, especially telecommunications companies, is an
underutilized strategy to move beyond "pilotitis". Existing pioneers in the space must engage in
strategic collaborative partnerships with the private sector or incentivize independent
commercial health technology ventures.

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