DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of the proposed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Education Program is to increase research capacity and quality in global health research and research training in China and other Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). This will be achieved through the creation of a model educational program in research informatics and communication science at Guangxi Medical University (GMU) for their biomedical and health researchers including faculty and graduate student trainees. To ensure that the model ICT education program is appropriate for and adaptable to non-GMU institutions, five other Chinese medical universities will participate actively in the development of the model ICT education program and will adapt and implement it to their settings upon completion of this 3 year project. The development, use and evaluation of the model program will be performed at GMU's Center for Medical Information Technology (CMIT) which facilitates educational innovation using information and communication technologies. The Joint PIs for the project are two Boston University (BU) faculty: Robert Friedman, MD, a senior informatician who has worked internationally, including China, and Abu Abdullah, MD, PhD, a global health researcher in behavioral health who was trained in China and does most of his research in that country. The proposed training program builds on prior research capacity building in China by the two PIs, including NIH FIC support for dementia epidemiologic research at GMU (PI: Abdullah) and NIH FIRCA that established behavioral informatics research laboratories at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Shenzhen Chronic Disease Hospital in China (PI: Friedman). The two specific aims are to: 1) expand previous Fogarty-funded research capacity- building programs in China and extend them to other LMICs, and 2) build upon existing ICT education at BU in informatics and Emerson College (Boston) in health communications science. The specific tasks to be performed during the 3 year project at GMU are 1) a formal needs assessment based on methods used by Dr. Friedman in developing an informatics course at BU for national dissemination, 2) development of the curriculum and how it will be delivered at GMU based on the results of the needs assessment study, 3) pilot testing, implementation and operation of the ICT education program at GMU; 4) continuous quality improvement (CQI) and formal evaluation of the ICT program. An Oversight Group of faculty and students at GMU and the five non-GMU universities that will implement the ICT program, will form a learning community to oversee ICT program development and its adaptation to non-GMU settings.

PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: ICT is essential in modern day biomedical and health research for the following reasons: 1) projects entail the analysis and interpretation of very larg complex datasets for which informatics methods are essential, and 2) use of ICT in health interventions is becoming commonplace. Any lack of ICT training of researchers impedes modern research.