How Python is Improving Global Health
Aaron C. Beals, Aaron VanDerlip, Rebecca Weintraub
- Audience level:
- Novice
- Category:
- Other
Description
Over the past seven years, the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University has built a knowledge-sharing platform to serve those working in global health. We adopted Python, by way of Django, as the core language of our platform in 2008. We're hoping to raise awareness of our project and see how opening our API or code base might allow others to build on what we've created.
Abstract
The Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University developed and launched a web-based, open-access platform in 2008 to serve health care delivery professionals around the globe. The platform, [GHDonline][1], was built on the Django web framework.
The core of the GHDonline platform is a discussion-based forum that provides interaction via email, a feature we developed to serve the needs of our users in low-resource settings. On this base platform, we have built modules for:
- finding Tuberculosis infection control specialists in resource-limited countries
- asynchronous teleconsult for difficult clinical cases
- global, public virtual conferences ("Expert Panels")
- community management
- data analytics & reporting
- digital badges to standardize professional health care learning & credentialing
This poster will demonstrate how we built these modules and how we are considering opening our API so that others might build on our platform. We are hoping to meet others who are interested in global health and discuss how this platform could be extended.
[1]: http://ghdonline.org/
