Launch of the Digital Health Week 2018

The Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka (HISSL) in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), the Commonwealth Medical Association (CMA), the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health (CWCDH), the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI),  the World Health Organization (WHO), University of Colombo and the Ministry of Health, Nutrition & Indigenous Medicine of Sri Lanka is pleased to announce the Digital Health Week 2018 to be held at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka from 7 to 12 October 2018.

The Digital Health Week consists of

Digital Health Week 2018 would be the largest gathering of digital health professionals from around the world anywhere in the world in 2018. The Digital Health Week 2018 builds on the success of previous Digital Health Conferences held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016 (http://www.cma2016.org), and 2017 (http://www.cmadhc.org). The Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka has been the main organizer of all these conferences.

The Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka, founded on 18 November 1998, traces its origins to the Medical Informatics Committee of the Sri Lankan Medical Association, established in January 1997. In 2007 on an initiative of the HISSL, the University of Colombo established the Specialty Board in Biomedical Informatics that runs the MSc in Biomedical Informatics and MD in Health Informatics Courses in Sri Lanka that lead to board certification of specialists in the field of Health Informatics in the country. Sri Lanka is only the second country in the world, after the USA, to recognize Health Informatics as a medical speciality. Over the past decade, Sri Lanka’s eHealth ecosystem has grown around the 120 graduates of the above-mentioned courses. They have spearheaded the development of a sustainable digital health ecosystem in Sri Lanka. These initiatives that commenced in Sri Lanka were internationalized in October 2016 when Professor Vajira H. W. Dissanayake became the President of the Commonwealth Medical Association and initiated the Commonwealth Digital Health Initiative. The highlights of the initiative were the launch of the Commonwealth Digital Health Centre at a side event of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London, UK on 20 April 2018 with the participation of His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena and the Ministerial Luncheon on Digital Health as a side event of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland on 22 May 2018 with the participation of Honorable Dr Rajitha Senaratne and Ministers of Health of  India, Malta, Jamaica, and South Africa. These events were perfectly timed to support the adoption of the first-ever global resolution on Digital Health that was adopted by the World Health Assembly on 24 May 2018.
We welcome everyone from around the world to the Celebration of Digital Health in Colombo from 7 to 12 October 2018.

For further details please visit the website http://www.dhw2018.org or contact the DHW secretariat via +94112689545 or send an email to conference@hissl.lk

The links to the collaborating organizations