Leveraging technology to support HELINA Education Working Group activities

The EWG brings together members from HELINA countries with an interest in education and capacity-building in health informatics for the African region. To meet the EWG goals, the group needed robust mechanisms to support its key functions and activities, including engaging country partners and working group members, curating knowledge-bases, sharing information, and networking among members. The infrastructure and technologies needed by the HELINA EWG were primarily guided by long-standing work sets for this WG. These work sets included supporting development of health informatics curricula, developing a repository of training materials in health informatics, compiling a database of health informatics curricula from Africa, and developing a repository of tools to enable the development of curricula at Masters level. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became imperative to support online-based modalities for meeting and education. A pragmatic approach was used in selecting the technologies to be implemented to support the outlined activities of the EWG. This approach aligned with the first five steps for technology selection defined by the Digital Clarity Group and others. The steps included validating the need, compiling requirements, determining focal needs, creating a technology shortlist, and creating a service provider shortlist. The traditional Waterfall approach was used in developing the technology infrastructure, with the team embarking on development, testing, and implementation of the new platform using services provided by a collaborating organization with the EWG. The resulting core technology infrastructure had several key features, with most of the features organized around the HELINAnet website to support EWG activities. The HELINAnet website, based on WordPress, provides the overall base for the EWG infrastructure. The website's first key role is to provide general information that pertains to the EWG and the larger HELINA. To this end, HELINAnet outlines the EWG's key areas of focus, selected WG achievements, and ongoing activities. The website further provides links to the social media platforms of LinkedIn and Twitter that are used by the EWG as modalities to disseminate information. The HELINA EWG also implemented a discussion forum, HELINAtalk, an eLearning and content organization platform, HELINALearn, social media accounts, a video conferencing platform based on Zoom, an email-based Google mailing list, and an electronic newsletter. Metrics of use were maintained to measure user engagement, including online behavior metrics that reflect on popularity, awareness, and use of the various technology-based modalities implemented to support HELINA EWG activities. The approach taken to implement the technological infrastructure to support EWG activities can serve as a demonstrative model that could be employed by other HELINA WG, as well as the larger organization. The HELINA EWG's experience in developing and implementing technology-based infrastructure can provide valuable insights for other health informatics associations and working groups seeking to enhance their activities and reach.