Use and Adaptation of Open Source Software for Capacity Building to Strengthen Health Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

Health research capacity strengthening is of importance to reach health goals. The ARCADE projects' aim was to strengthen health research across Africa and Asia using innovative educational technologies. In the four years of the EU funded projects, challenges also of technical nature were identified. This article reports on a study conducted within the ARCADE projects. The study focused on addressing challenges of video conferencing in resource constrained settings and was conducted using action research. As a result, a plugin for the open source video conferencing system minisip was implemented and evaluated. The study showed that both the audio and video streams could be improved by the introduced plugin, which addressed one technical challenge.