HIV/AIDS
Richard Lester
Global mHealth (WelTel):
Clinical research interests include using mobile information technology (cell phones) to improve patient support and health services in resource-limited settings. This initial work in Kenya was featured on CBC’s The National, highlighted by the World Health Organization Essential Medicines Monitor, and published in Nature. This work represents the first comparative outcomes research showing effectiveness of mHealth for HIV and health outcomes in a developing world setting (published in The Lancet online Nov. 9th, 2010). We are working to scale up the project and expanding to include health conditions other than HIV.
Child Mortality
Matthew Wiens
Post Discharge Survival
My current project, funded by Grand Challenges Canada, seeks to both develop and test interventions that can be applied to children at high risk of post-discharge mortality in Uganda. Also, this project seeks to develop and test and mobile phone based application that can allow front line health workers to identify those children at highest risk of mortality, thereby focusing their limited resources on the children who are most vulnerable. For more information see http://spph.ubc.ca/post-discharge-survival/.