The EU-funded project BETTEReHEALTH aims to contribute towards better, more accessible and effective health and care services in low and lower-middle income African countries. This shall be achieved by means of the coordination of, and assistance with, the implementation of sustainable e-health applications.
The African and European partners that are involved in the BETTEReHEALTH initiative, strongly believe in the project’s credo: “Better eHealth is Better Health”.
“The aim of our project is to support low and lower-middle income African countries to prepare national e-health strategies and programmes designed to assist them in exploiting the promising potential that e-health applications have to offer”, says Konstantinos Antypas, who is a Research Scientist at SINTEF Digital’s department for Health Research and is heading the BETTEReHEALTH project.
“All the partners in the BETTEReHEALTH project share a joint understanding that the increased use of e-health applications is not an aim in itself, but rather a tool that can be used to improve the health of as many people as possible. This is of particular relevance during the current Covid pandemic,” he says.
A major contribution
In collaboration with the health ministries of the various participating countries, the project shall establish regional hubs in Ghana, Malawi, Ethiopia and Tunisia. As part of the project work, the researchers in collaboration with WHO and the ministries of health in target countries will be setting up databases containing information about existing e-health applications and policies. These databases will be used in the preparation of effective frameworks within which e-health applications can be utilised and will provide useful information about the implementation of e-health systems in the countries that are involved in the project.
" BETTEReHEALTH is an important contribution to improve the quality of health services and increase access to health for underserved populations in Africa" says Morten Dalsmo, Executive Vice President at SINTEF and Head of SINTEF Digital.
"This project is very much in line with SINTEF's vision 'technology for a better society' and our commitment to the sustainable development goals. SINTEF has valuable experience from projects in eHealth and digital health and in addition to coordinating BETTEReHEALTH, we aim to share these experiences with the consortium and the health authorities in African countries", he says.
International collaboration
The BETTEReHEALTH project also aims to contribute towards the development of new and existing strategic partnerships on the African continent between European and African stakeholders and public authorities in the fields of health service provision, research, education and business.
"SINTEF and our partners have an extensive network in Africa. BETTEReHEALTH aims for stakeholders in Africa and Europe to connect and make new partnerships with the overall purpose of better health outcomes”, says Dalsmo
In addition to SINTEF, eleven European and African partners are participating in this two-year project. Other participants from Norway include the University of Oslo, the University of South-Eastern Norway and the Norwegian Centre for e-Health Research.
Read more about the BETTEReHEALTH project here.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101017450
Project partners:
SINTEF (Norway, Project Coordinator), the Norwegian Centre for e-Health Research, the University of South-Eastern Norway, the company Ets. Lievens-Lanckman in Belgium, the University of Oslo, the Sfax HealthTech Cluster in Tunisia, Ghana Health Service in Ghana, Jimma University in Ethiopia, the University of Gondar in Ethiopia, Health Information Systems Programmes Ltd in Malawi and Helder Resultaat in the Netherlands.
