The University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences (UZCHS) successfully bid for a Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) award that was granted in 2010.UZCHS in partnership with University of Colorado (UC) and Stanford University (SU) developed a comprehensive program (NECTAR) to address the three major themes of MEPI, namely clinical capacity development, research capacity strengthening, and retention of medical workforce. The impact of the MEPI program at UZCHS in spite of a decade (1999-2009) of diminished governmental support, political and economic uncertainty with significant faculty attrition has been truly remarkable. New services and technology have been created to improve medical research at UZCHS, but emerging faculty do not have skills or training opportunities to use these tools effectively. The investments in ICT resources represent an important step forward in the infrastructure available to support clinical research, but adequate training in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) investments has not been possible under the NECTAR awards due to lack of dedicated funding. The goal of the proposed work is to Promote Research through ICT Excellence (PRICE) at UZCHS, which will be achieved through the following specific aims: 1. Teach clinical researchers how to use ICT. 2. Train non-researcher ICT experts at UZCHS in basic and advanced research informatics methods to educate and support future researchers at UZCHS. 3. Conduct formative research regarding novel applications of ICT including SMS and mobile applications to support UZCHS research activities throughout Zimbabwe PRICE will train a UZCHS team consisting of an ICT expert and an informatician who can use educational resources developed during this award to train clinical researchers at UZCHS, to provide advanced informatics services, and to develop novel applications that support clinical research throughout Zimbabwe using web and mobile technology. PRICE will enhance quality and quantity of research programs established under NECTAR and will provide a formal, self-sustaining strategy for ICT training and support not achievable under existing awards. Educational resources will use exclusively free or open-source software, promoting reusability of resources in any institution without additional software investment. Finally, foundational research regarding novel mobile and web research applications to use as the basis of future awards will be conducted and analyzed.
The project aims to Promote Research through ICT Excellence (PRICE). This will be accomplished through bridging the gap between availability of ICT infrastructure and productive use of ICT by emerging UZCHS faculty that exists due to lack of formal education resources, lack of local ICT educators, inadequate practical support, and limited access to resources outside of UZCHS. PRICE will provide UZCHS with the technical expertise to capitalize on their ICT investments in support of ongoing Medical Education Partnership Initiative-related research activities in a self-sustaining manner that may be disseminated easily to other low-middle income countries, and it will provide foundational work for expanding research activities to other parts of Zimbabwe through mobile technology.
