The objectives of Global Health Diagnostics are to:
1. Provide resources and best practice
2. Create and facilitate an interactive community for sharing of knowledge and experience
3. Facilitate time limited, topical discussions with experts
4. Facilitate e-learning
There are several core components to the website and several additions that we hope to make in the future as part of our objectives. Along the toolbar on the Global Health Diagnostics homepage, we have outlined these components. They are: About, Resources and Community.
1. Resources: This is where you will find informative articles on a multitude of topics related to diagnostics. We will continue to develop our resources over time and welcome ideas from users for articles as well as submissions. We will also be updating the resources with scientific articles as we receive copyright permission from the journals to do so.
2. Community: The community is where website members can really become involved. Here you will find blogs written by colleagues, discussion groups, workspaces and bookmarks. You will have to be a member of Global Health Diagnostics to become involved but it’s free to join! The Discussion Groups are created by The Editorial Team and website members to address specific questions or to facilitate discussion. The In-Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) group is a space for members to post questions or concerns they have about the use and quality of diagnostic tests. We do ask that all comments are kept professional and that members respect one another and the manufacturers of the tests. We think this is a valuable resource and would like to keep it active but this relies on members posting honest and professional comments for discussion.
Workspaces, part of the community, is an area for members to work together on a document, similar to a wiki-page. The creator of the workspace has the ability to make it an ‘open’ or a ‘closed’ space. An open space is visible to all Global Health Diagnostics visitors whereas a closed space only visible to members who have been invited to join. This allows members to collaborate on private or confidential documents.
We are working on having topical discussions with experts. These would be time limited and website members could vote on the topic they find most interesting. For a two week period, members would then be able to ask questions and receive a response from an expert in the field.
3. e-learning (under- construction): We are also in the process of developing an e-learning programme and bring diagnostic courses being taught around the world to you in an online format.
Code of Conduct: Global Health Diagnostics is a professional community for researchers, end-users, developers and manufacturers of diagnostic tests. It is expected that all comments, questions, bookmarks and blogs will be professional, respectful and contain accurate data which can be verified by external resources. Any breaches of conduct will result the post being removed from the website and a letter of warning, suspension, or deletion of a membership account. If you are concerned a comment, question, bookmark or blog may breach this Code of Conduct, please contact the website coordinator at admin@globalhealthdiagnostics.org and the matter will be discussed by the Steering Committee who will determine the action to be taken.
Global Health Diagnostics is governed by a steering committee composed of experts in the field of diagnostics and public health. The steering committee provides guidance and direction to the development of the site and are critical to its ongoing development.
We welcome your feedback and suggestions on how to improve Global Health Diagnostics and make it more relevant and informative for the user.
Website Coordinator, Global Health Diagnostics