While going mobile is a trend we are all following, the University of Notre Dame’s Master of Science in Global Health curriculum includes a new class on mobile health. Facilitated by Nick Martin of TechChange: The Institute for Technology and Social Change, seven students have enrolled in the virtual class for the Spring 2014 semester.

The on campus instructor is Dr. Joseph Bock, who will serve as an intermediary. He is involved in overseeing their work outside of class and consults with the mHealth course leaders online.

The class consists of 5 one-hour expert presentations on various topics related to mHealth facilitated by TechChange. These usually involve a 20-30 minute presentation by the expert followed by a question and answer period.

“This is an exciting time for academia when we can include the coming together of technology and health education,” states Dr. Katherine Taylor, Director of Operations, University of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health, and Interim Director of Global Health Training.  “We are always looking for new innovative ways to teach the latest information in global health and our partnership with TechChange is the next step in educating our students about innovative health delivery.”

TechChange provides scalable and interactive technology training for social change. They deliver online certificate courses to individuals, build customized courses and learning experiences for organizations, and strengthen technology-enabled communities of practice. Their custom online social learning platform facilitates best practice sharing, builds professional networks, and integrates a number of dynamic features for both real-time and self-paced interaction. Over 2000 alumni from over 100 countries apply technology effectively and appropriately in response to global challenges. Participants have come from a number of prominent organizations such the United Nations, World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, Red Cross, US State Department, Harvard University, and more.

The Eck Institute for Global Health is a university-wide enterprise that recognizes health as a fundamental human right and endeavors to promote research, training, service to advance health standards for all people, especially people in low and middle-income countries, who are disproportionately impacted by preventable diseases.