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Descripción
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| Through collaborative tools, African health professionals could benefit from knowledge and informatics resources that European colleagues have collaboratively developed over the last decades. However, many of these tools have been shelved, without reaching a commercial stage. In the African context, where the cost of software licenses or the low quality of the Internet connection are just some of the priority difficulties, these kinds of open tools may have a second opportunity. During its first year, the AFRICA BUILD project ?a European project which aims to build sustainable health education and research in Africa? has created a platform that aims to support European and African health professionals for sharing numerous technological resources through virtual communities. This platform, called the AFRICA BUILD Portal, is located at the core of a professional network where users can access tools mainly centered on social and collaborative e-learning and research. Examples include a repository that integrates existing courses, such as those created by members of AFRICA BUILD or new ones created by the users of the platform ?the courses will be ranked through new algorithms that measure their quality?, a brokerage service to facilitate mobility and training of professionals, an inventory of resources for storing and accessing remote software tools, or several services to keep up to date to the user about the latest news, projects or initiatives related to her profile. The AFRICA BUILD Portal uses a distributed architecture based on Web Services, where the user accesses in a transparent mode the resources hosted in different locations. The platform is oriented to low bandwidth connections and is configurable by the user in two aspects: users can select the tools they want to use through the addition of widgets that include the functionality of the resource, and they may also develop and integrate new tools in the Portal through the implementation of plugins. Various partners of the AFRICA BUILD consortium have participated in the developments of the AFRICA BUILD portal, including four African partners of the project (Ministry of Communications & Information Technology of Egypt, Universite de Bamako in Mali, Universite de Yaounde I in Cameroon and the University of Ghana). Such collaborative effort aims to foster sustainable collaborations to maintain, update and improve the platform once the project ends. | |
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Internacional
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Entidad
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2012 Africa-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT |
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Tipo de publicación
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Acatas 2012 Africa-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT |