Mozambique Roundtable discussions on the STRATEGIC project milestones and ways forward

As part of the STRATEGIC Project, it was held a roundtable discussion in Maputo, Mozambique, on September 10th as part f the project effort to design and deploy an ethical framework on use of digital health technology aligned with the African context. Key stakeholders and partners based in Kenya, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa and Mozambique attended the meeting. The meeting was chaired by Professor Mohsin Sidat Vice-Rector of the University Eduardo Mondlane and PI of the Project in Mozambique.

Mohsin Sidat highlighted the importance of integrating digital health technologies such as mobile health, electronic health records, telemedicine, cloud-based applications, and artificial intelligence into health systems. He also emphasized that the project seeks to facilitate knowledge sharing, best practices, and continuous learning in the field of responsible digital health, including ethic practice, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The roundtable also served as an opportunity for experience sharing among participants on digital health and data protection on research. The reason why we believe that the implementation of this project reflects the urgent need to strengthen existing ethical and legal instruments in the region, given the growing integration of digital technologies in healthcare, seeking to prevent risks and negative impacts for patients, communities and society in general. Furthermore, we discussed the project Afro-Centric framework called 5C. The framework is the result of multiple data collection strategies and co-creation workshops aimed to systemize and propose a framework sensitive to the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) principles and values. Those values and principles are embedded in the SSA in the sociocultural context.

During the discussions, one of the Mozambique participants, Lourino Chemane, the CEO of the National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (INTIC) also emphasized the importance of developing regulatory instruments to meet the demands of technological development and highlighted the importance of the Data Protection Law, which is currently being drafted which will contribute to guaranteeing the privacy and dignity of patients, ensuring the confidentiality of sensitive information such as medical records, and preventing misuse, discrimination, or fraud.