"User-Based Global Health Technologies to Combat HIV/AIDS"
Bill Rodriguez and Lee Zamir, Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative

12:00 Noon on Thursday, January 26, 2006
TSRB 132

HIV infection is the worst pandemic in 700 years, affecting 40 million people on six continents. In the US, advanced medical care has brought the disease largely under control. An average HIV-infected patient in the U.S. sees a physician four times a year, regularly undergoes a battery of complex laboratory tests, and takes daily medications, all buttressed by a complex health infrastructure and advanced medical technologies, to the tune of $10,000 per year of services. In resource-poor settings in Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and the Caribbean, life with HIV infection is decidedly more complex -- leaving some countries on the brink of collapse.

So: how can $10,000 of annual care be brought to countries where total annual per capita health spending is $20? Can technological advances bring modern health systems closer to poor patients in rural Africa? How? First, we will discuss the conditions in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, and South Africa; new technologies being used to address the pandemic and unmet needs. Second, we will review operations research approaches to global health problems, especially the use of simulation modeling: how can discrete event simulation software be used to identify critical bottlenecks and opportunities that affect a pandemic, and how can it be implemented in field settings (including hardware, software, database needs)? Finally, we will focus on one key bottleneck, a laboratory test known as CD4 counting, and the critical blood test used to monitor HIV patients worldwide. What is the need for CD4 counting? What is the use case? What can be done to bring a complex blood test out of resource-intensive laboratories and into field conditions where health workers can use it to make real-time, real-world medical decisions? We will use multiple media and hands-on demonstrations to explore the above. HIV will serve as an example of the need for user-based applications of technologies for global health.

Bill Rodriguez completed his medical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. His research focus is HIV operations research, and the application of new technologies for affordable global health diagnostics. He has worked on HIV clinical and laboratory programs in Africa, the Caribbean, and Vietnam. He is currently the director of HIV operations research and senior medical advisor for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative.

Lee Zamir is a product designer and engineer at the Bose Corporation. Lee has ten years of product design and engineering experience, with an emphasis on user interface design motivated by real world use cases. His career has focused on ultra-simple interfaces for consumer and automotive electronics and, most recently, point-of-care healthcare diagnostics.