Aima Ahonkhai, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and physician at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center attended the 2018 mHealth Training Institute (mHTI) at UCLA in July as a mHealth Scholar. The competitive program selects scholars based on their interest in multidisciplinary team science and mobile technologies.
mHTI is the Training Core of the National Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K), which focuses on tools to collect and analyze health data generated by mobile and wearable sensors with the aim of advancing biomedical discovery and improving health through mobile sensor big data.
The week-long, immersive training provides opportunities to establish collaborative research networks for robust mentoring among the core group of academic, industry and government thought leaders who are chosen for their expertise in mHealth.
Ahonkhai's research focuses on HIV adherence with an interest in youth living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa - a population for whom HIV is the leading cause of death. "After a week of intensive training, I am more familiar with a wider range of novel mHealth strategies and how they can be leveraged along with novel study design to support chronic disease management," said Ahonkhai.
Todd Giorgio, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt School of Engineering also was selected to attend. Ahonkhai and Giorgio worked on the same team, and with other group members, they developed a preliminary proposal to use novel biosensor and drug detection technology to study drivers of adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among young men who have sex with men in Tennessee.
Visit the mHIT website to learn more.
