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WONCA RURAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE (WRITE)

Our Vision

Optimum rural health through optimum communication.

Our Mission

To promote the exchange and sharing of information technology amongst rural medical practitioners, and ubiquitous access to information technology resources for rural communities.

History

The WONCA Rural Information Technology Exchange was established at the 1st International Rural Medicine Conference in Shanghai, China on May 22, 1996. With the realisation that there was no international coordination for rural medical practitioners, interested members from the Canadian, Australian, British, and Chinese groups established a working group tasked with setting up an information exchange mechanism.

There are many national, regional and provincial bodies which promote the integration of medical informatics into rural practice but no international links were available, apart from on a personal level. With coordination at an international level, such bodies can have a much more powerful influence on the progress and implementation of medical informatics, to ensure that the resources are freely available to all medical practitioners, regardless of where they practise.

Until now, such resources have been much more accessible to urban sites, because of the simple geographic limitations to access. The Internet removes such physical barriers by its very nature - resources can be accessed anywhere in the world, regardless of their physical location. But access to this information is still dependent on the availability of local access to the Internet at economical rates. WRITE was established to promote the goal of universal access to such resources.

Since then, the WRITE group have been meeting 2 to 3 times per year by teleconference, and also at each World Rural Health Congress so far.

Note: this page contains archival material of the WRITE group, which functioned between 1996 and 2009.

Click here to view the WRITE Library