Health Sciences Online

Purpose: A site (www.hso.info) where health professionals in training and practice easily access comprehensive, high quality, free, current courses, references, and other learning resources (already nearly 20,000 of them) to improve global health. HSO has also gathered a collection of links to child-suitable sites for OLPC, and will have a full range of health courses and materials available Summer 2008.

Background: Health sciences information and training are vital for health and socioeconomic development, but good, free learning resources are difficult to find. In recent years, information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet, have been central to remedying this situation. But there are still significant hurdles to accessing online content. The World Health Organization (WHO) and others have shown that there is an enormous need to identify selective, current, accessible online educational and training resources to promote appropriate care and policies.

Project deliverable: A virtual learning center for comprehensive health professional education and training, including web-accessible health sciences courses, reference libraries with textbooks, databases, and journals, and collaboration spaces for person-to-person interaction. The site is a portal with browse and search engine functions providing free online linkages to a comprehensive collection of top-quality courses and references in medicine, public health, nursing, and other health sciences disciplines. These materials will be donated, hosted, and maintained by our distinguished content partners, so health professionals in training and practice around the world can access a free, current, full, world-class education through our portal. Our primary target audience is health professionals in training and practice in developing countries, and we will also freely provide many of these materials to other interested populations around the world. Founding collaborators for this site are the American College of Preventive Medicine, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of British Columbia (UBC), the World Bank, and WHO. We have a distinguished advisory board, and a staff that has begun this work. This effort already has courses and references committed from our founding collaborators and other organizations, as well as governments, specialty societies, businesses, and universities such as Columbia, Cornell, Emory, Harvard, Hopkins, and MIT. Some funding has been obtained from WHO, the Canadian government, and others, and more is being sought.

For more information or to contribute, contact Erica Frank, MD, MPH, HSO Founder/Executive Director, efrank@emory.edu or Erica.Frank@ubc.ca

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