Abstract:
The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is as much an information war as it is a medical war. Members from
South Asia and the Asia Pacific countries share their experiences and challenges faced with collaborative responses
for the ASIS&T Special Chapter funded project on “Dealing with COVID-19 and saving people’s lives in South
Asia (SA) areas & beyond—A Health Informatics Promotion Project” awarded to the South Asia Chapter in 2021.
The panel discusses the challenges faced within the context of geopolitical, socio-economic, religious, and cultural
conditions prevalent within their countries. In the first 40 minutes, panel members narrate their own experiences by
sharing their personal stories about this collaborative project and share the challenges of content creation and
promotion from within the context of their respective countries. The next 30 minutes will be facilitated by the panel
chair inviting a discussion between panel members and the audience to engage and come up with innovative ideas,
discuss challenges in creating multilingual content and suggestions for improving the project outcome as well as
shed light on initiating future health informatics project in similar regions. The last 20 minutes will culminate with
the summarization of these collaborative experiences.
