Juan Antonio Casas Senior External Relations Officer WHO Liaison Office, European Union

1. Knowledge Management and Technical Cooperation in Health in the XXI Century: Towards eCooperation for Health DevelopmentVI CRICSPuebla, MexicoMayo 2003 Juan Antonio Casas Senior External Relations Officer WHO Liaison Office, European Union

2. Health and the Knowledge Society • Impact on general health determinants: changes in economic, social, cultural and political relations (globalization) • Redefinition of the concept of community: creation of virtual communities (social capital) • Strengthening participation of poor in decision making process (“empowerment”)

3. The Knowledge Society: How Can It Relate to Increased Equity? • Poor and vulnerable people empowered through greater connectivity, knowledge-sharing, transparency: closing the digital divide • Increased generation, sharing, and local adaptation of knowledge - engine of sustainable development • Higher-quality public services • Vibrant economy rapidly expanding incomes and employment, reducing poverty • New opportunities for developing countries to be globally competitive

4. We can address BOTH the Challenges of: • Reducing health inequities • Narrowing the digital divide…. By preparing citizens and health information infrastructure for the Knowledge Society

5. Examples of eCooperation Opportunities Created by the Knowledge Society • Training and • Human resource • development • Distance Education • Acreditation • eExpert data bases • eHealth • Applications for • Preventive and Curative • health care • hardware production • software production • remote services • Reaching isolated • and remote areas • Communication • Access to knowledge • Virtual Health Library • Policy development • Evidence based policy • Standards, norms • Best practices • Access to information,democratization • Civil society participation • Health Promotion • Public Information • Community information • greater reach Knowledge Society eCooperation • Horizontal Cooperation • eConsultancies directly • linking information • consumers and producers • eTechnical and • eMinisterial Conferences • Financial and technical • resource management • Program planning • Monitoring/evaluation • Cost effectiveness

6. Trends: Shift to Intangibles eCooperation in Health means: Location independent value creation in the administration of knowledge for health development And requires: • Network Capabilities • internally • externally • Innovation Skills • Knowledge Management

7. eCooperation in Health: Organizational issues • Organizational issues are the major challenges in the transformation of the traditional cooperation paradigm into eCooperation(applications will not do better something that does not need to be done in the first place..) • The eCooperation components require system wide managerial decisions on new working methods in the health sector and the cooperation agents • Necessary condition for successful implementation of eCooperation in Health is the synergy of health professionals, health managers/authorities and health cooperation agents

8. collaboration process process Value Chain Value Chain mediation Value Network Value Network Dynamic Value Constellation New Collaboration Structures

9. Competence nodes networking Group of competencies needed to perform a task M M M Customers Competence nodes networking M=Management response of a given task in a given time point is given to the competence node which understands the customers problem best

10. Value is created in whatever way is appropriate, no longer dictated by organisational relations and boundaries How to avoid friction in the dynamics needed?

11. Operation Creation Dissolution Reconfiguration Technology enables changes in organisational forms and Organisational forms motivate changes in technology

12. Critical aspects for future eCooperation and Health development • Cutting across many technology areas • Dynamism and adaptability • Access and availability • Media-rich and multimodal environments • Supported by existing infrastructure of networks and services • Natural interaction • Supporting creativity • Increased cost-effectiveness of technical cooperation resources