HOME: MEDICINE+HEALTH-HOPE in African HIV/AIDS fight-Harvard-developed Internet platform provides real-time HIV medical

• South Africa’s current HIV/AIDS problem is complicated by a parallel epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis, said Walker. Add to that a dearth of HIV drugs and the recent failure of a once-promising HIV vaccine.

• That’s where HOPE comes in — an acronym for HIV Online Provider for Education, a Harvard-developed Internet platform for training in HIV medicine.
“The Internet can be used as a tool for HIV medicine throughout the world,” said Rajesh T. Gandhi, director of HIV Clinical Services and HIV Education at MGH. He used HOPE to address the HIGH seminar by remote too, though only from his office in Boston.

• There’s been progress in durable treatments for HIV infection, he said — and even in parts of the world with limited resources antiretroviral therapy is increasingly employed. But training for health care workers does not always keep up with scientific advances, said Gandhi, and opportunities for education are limited by expense and by great distances.

• Telemedicine can help, but it often requires support staff and specialized equipment too expensive and hard to deploy in resource-poor settings. HOPE is a simple and robust alternative. It’s a Web-based voice over-Internet protocol (VoIP) that requires only an Internet connection (high or low bandwidth is OK), computer speakers, and — if you wish to speak — microphones.

• HOPE offers another advantage — conferences that are automatically recorded and archived. That allows what Gandhi called a “blended approach” to learning. Conference goers learn in real time; others can review material later.

• Harvard has been using HOPE for three years now, and organizes twice-monthly HIV education Internet conferences. HOPE technology is based on Centra, a Web-based e-learning platform already commonly used to link businesses all over the world. (Cisco, Microsoft, and others have similar interactivity products.)