Cell-Life has just begun to redevelop their pilot ART site, the Hunan Crusaid HIV/Aids clinic. The new development will be in two portions.

In February 2000, the IEE Health Technology Professional Network began a series of biennial conferences on appropriate medical technology for developing countries, bringing together healthcare technologists and researchers from around the world. The 4th conference will take place at Savoy Place, London on the 23rd and 24th of May 2006. Sarah Brown and Rory Fynn of Cell-life have been accepted to present two papers at this conference. The two papers are entitled “A Pharmacy Stock Control Management System to Effectively Monitor and Manage Patients on ART” and “Remote HIV/AIDS Patient Monitoring Tool Using 3G/GPRS Packet-Switched Mobile Technology”.

Cell-Life is honoured to be given this opportunity to present on current research activities. For further information and attendance details regarding this event please visit the IEE Events and Venues information page.

For the first two weeks of January, Cell-Life had the great pleasure of hosting two visitors from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Telemedicine in Norway, Eli Arild and Niklas Andersson spend some time with us to familiarize themselves with some of the work we do at grass root level. We are actively working towards setting up a collaboration that will allow knowledge and skills transfer between both organisations. NST and Cell-Life met during a telemedicine workshop held by the NST (Tromsø, Norway) in June 2005 in as part of the 46664 initiative (http://www.46664arctic.no/).

The concept of fighting HIV/Aids from the North to the South appealed to the two teams from Tromsø and Cape Town, and we hope that we can add some value to this fantastic concept through the development of e-health tools for HIV/Aids management and treatment support in the public health sector.

Since late 2004, Cell-Life has relied upon Hetzner for the Internet hosting services of all “live” applications for HIV treatment sites. In late 2005, the Cell-Life website and email services were also taken over by Hetzner. Under Hetzner’s Social Responsibility component of their Corporate Citizenship programme, Hetzner have committed to a 1 year sponsorship and support to Cell-Life over 2006 of additional services. Cell-Life is very grateful and appreciative to Hetzner for this support and commitment, and we look forward to working together to provide the best service delivery to our clients.

Cell-Life develops ICT-based systems to support the monitoring and management challenges of HIV treatment in the public health sector. With a client-server principle underlying the operation of all Cell-Life applications, effective operations and service delivery are only possible with effective and efficient communication channels. Most remote communication utilised within the Cell-Life system takes place over GSM or GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) with support from service providers or WASPs (Wireless Application Service Providers). However, a core communication component used in delivery of Cell-Life applications to treatment sites is the Internet.

Hetzner is a leading player in the South African web hosting environment. Established in 1999, the company has grown in stature and expertise, currently servicing over 38 000 active domains. It was founded with the vision of providing reliable and robust web hosting solutions coupled with outstanding customer support to the SMME and mid-corporate markets. Hetzner has been recognised as a Technology Top 100 (TT100) company after being named a TT100 Minister’s Award finalist for ‘Overall Technology Excellence’ in developing its proprietary control panel, konsoleH™.