The use of ICT for health, or e-health, is fundamental in health care delivery and public health practice. It has particular value in responding to shared global health challenges such as emerging epidemics or the health consequences of natural disasters. It is well documented that ICT is sorely lacking in countries that need it most: those countries most vulnerable to threats from diseases, disasters and poverty.

Many community-based ICT4D programs primarily face scalability and sustainability challenges, the root causes of which can be traced to a) the lack of effective integration and linkages between community-based implementation and the national-community policy-strategy formulation and development program deployment and b) the need to induce the venture approach in community-based programs and a wider access to opportunity-creation for community-based programs.

Why a CoE on GDISP?

A framework that constructs ICTs as a constitutive element of a new systemic social architecture, rather than just as a set of useful tools, provides a better possibility for understanding their transformatory nature. Within such a framework, it is necessary to understand and acknowledge the gender dimensions of these changes and to suitably engender information society (IS) policies.