From Bellagio, Italy, AllAfrica's Boakai Fofana blogs on a Rockefeller Foundation conference on how to use information technology to improve access to health care.

Coming from Liberia, where we are struggling to rebuild our public health infrastructure after decades of conflict, I'm finding it stimulating to be amongst a rich diversity of academics and health professionals from around the world who are discussing global health systems. The focus is on how increasing access to the Internet and related technologies can be used to improve health care delivery in developing countries – or what is often called, in the ideas being put forth here, the "Global South."

"Making the eHealth Connection: Global Partnerships, Local Solutions" - taking place at a Rockefeller Foundation conference center in the Italian city of Bellagio, north of Milan - has attracted experts: nurses, professors, engineers and doctors from every corner of the globe. It is, the organizers have said, a forum where donors, governments, industries, researchers and civil society are engaged in an effort to raise the profile of health-care practices supported by electronic processes and communications.

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