Technology, indigenous communities and health

As an Australian I would like to focus my research on Australian Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders. As a medical educator I have been thinking across both education and medical topics. My final decision was to focus on technologies, indigenous communities and health. This might still be too broad, but I plan to try and focus on three aspects that I have started to research:

• technology and health service delivery in indigenous communities (ehealth)
• technology for indigenous health promotion and patient education
• technology and traditional medicine

Mignone 2008 used the concept of social capital to explore ICT in Aboriginal Communities in Canada. Health is one of the areas he focused on. He describes three impacts of ICT on social capital in indigenous communities –transforming, diminishing and/or supplementing. His study and these concepts have provided a useful place to start, along with the WSIS position paper I posted as a module 1 weblog and other articles I have started to collect (as identified below).

Indigenous Position Paper for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

Lori A. Colomeda & Eberhard R. Wenzel (2000): Medicine keepers: Issues in indigenous health, Critical Public Health, 10:2, 243-256.  Downloaded 23/09/12 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713658247

Mignone J, Henley H, Brown J, O’Neil J, Ross W. (2008) Information and Communication Technology in Aboriginal Communities in Canada: Increasing Aboriginal Social Capital. A Discussion Paper.

Molyneaux, H, O’Donnell, S. (2009) ICT and Health and Wellness in Remote and Rural First Nations Communities: A Social Determinants of Health. Perspective Paper presented at the Canadian Society of Telehealth Conference (CST 2009),Vancouver, October 3-6 2009