NetHope Global Summit Explores Meaning of Digital NGO

The NetHope Global Summit was held November 7-11, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. This year’s Summit theme, “The Digital NGO: Turn Intent Into Action,” focused on disruptive technologies and the opportunities and challenges they present to improving global health. More than 300 attendees explored what it means to be a “digital NGO,” highlighting member projects, emerging technologies and innovative approaches from across the NetHope community.

The Summit’s opening keynote, Designed for Digital, was presented by Jeanne Ross of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research and looking at how large, established companies are transforming themselves. Jake Wood of Team Rubicon offered additional insights into the Digital NGO, exploring how his organization has leveraged new technology to rapidly achieve scale, flexibility and organizational resilience.

The health track began with NetHope’s Healthcare Working Group, featuring discussion of technologies used by members to improve global health and highlighting challenges such as connectivity, interoperability, collaboration, and pilot-itis. A keynote session on Fixing the Internet of Broken Things in Global Health was presented by Evan Thomas, an associate professor at Portland State University and director of the SWEETLab. Health-related breakout sessions included HC3’s SBCC in Emergencies,  VOTO Mobile and Medic Mobile’s ICT for Behavior Change Communication and PATH’s Enabling NGOs with Interoperability Standards, focused on their  Better Immunization Data (BID) Initiative.

The Summit concluded with insightful discussions on Internet of Things technology, cybersecurity and cognitive computing. All presentation sessions and recordings can be viewed here. We look forward to further collaboration at next year’s Summit in Vancouver, Canada!