October 2009
The Global Academy for Women's Health, Inc., in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus, submitted a project proposal to the National Institutes of Health for ARRA support for extension and renovation of facilities at the Campus aimed for the advancement of science and education in women's health.

September 2009
BioSciCon and Its Companies on the Forefront of mHealth Development The Global Academy for Women's Health is supporting BioSciCon's research and development for the advancement of science of women's health worldwide. There are still thousands of women who die from cervical cancer in the world. Approximately every two minutes one women get cervical cancer and every three minutes one women die from cervical cancer. Mortality is still high in the countries of the developing world, where only 15% of women get cervical cancer prevention. A simple Pap test that detects cervical cancer early (even in pre-cancerous stage) is still not available or not affordable to many women.

Trying to make a difference The Global Academy for Women's Health is supporting the efforts of BioSciCon, Inc. to make its MarkPap(r) Digital (diagnosis at distance) available to the world. For three years BioSciCon was developing its MarkPap(r) Digital enabling transfer of images with the aid of digital cameras and Internet to laboratories with professionals who provide the results. The main problem in the developing countries is lack of infrastructure and lack of trained professionals to provide the result. Telemedicine / telecytopathology enabling diagnosis at distance could be solution of this problem.

However, those who need medical help most do not have Internet and digital cameras. In the same time, the cellphone industry has advanced so quickly that much more people, even in least developed regions, have cellphones. This is why BioSciCon, Inc. focused it's efforts, using its powerful MarkPap technology platform, to develop MarkPap(r) Wireless-- transmission of images using cellphone cameras. The year 2009 was devoted to this task and BioSciCon, supported by the Global Academy for Women's Health, succeeded to advance in this field. Please, see www.bioscicon.com/gallery.html where first set of images obtained by cellphone camera is presented. With BioSciCon's permission, we are presenting here segments of its recent Press Release.

The mHealth denotes delivering health care services using mobile wireless communications that has recently emerged as a new viable option for providing health care in developing countries. The Year 2009 is proclaimed as the Year of mHealth. According to the United Nations Foundation, the mHealth is “a high reach, cost-efficient method for making healthcare more accessible, affordable and effective across the developing world.” Many regions in the world do not have access to the Internet, but 80% of the world’s population lives in regions with mobile phone accessibility.

BioSciCon’s Consortium of Companies is on the forefront of mHealth current development, developing a platform technology for wireless telecytopathology/telemicroscopy that uses mobile cellphone cameras for capturing microscopic images directly from the microscope in remote locations and wireless transmission of those images to distant centers for evaluation by professionals with or without interceptions of web-based digital-image networking systems. The system provides opportunity for the results to be returned to the end users within hours. BioSciCon has a patentable discovery that could be a revolutionary solution for improving health service delivery and surveillance in the developing world where it is most needed.

January 2009
The book "What every woman should know about cervical cancer'" was published in July 2008 by Springer for international distribution.

In August 2008, the New York Times published a comprehensive article "Drug makers' push leads to cancer vaccines' fast rise" which has created public alert and excitement. (Link to article). The full text was published in NYT on August 20, 2008.

This book came in a specific moment when in the US and in many countries of the world proponents of HPV vaccination are promoting mandatory vaccination for girls and are pressing issues to immunize as large population as possible. Because the vaccine is specific for only four HPV strains that can cause HPV persistent disease that can cause warts and/or cervical cancer in the future, because this future reference is not yet available (short time for evaluation), and because vaccines have their own side effects, potential consumers, women and their daughters are alerted, scared and somehow confused what to do. This book is bringing fresh, scientifically based information and is intended to improve women's knowledge to the level that can make educated decision about their own health. This task is not easy to achieve. Reading the book is an excellent first step, but is only a first step. Such books need to be understood and learned. Fully aware of the needs to expand the knowledge of women after reading the book, the Academy has designed a plan to work with those women who had read the book and have expressed interest for further knowledge, to help them obtain this knowledge via focus groups.

The second part "the interactive education" is open for enrollment. The focus groups are designed as party events where women will gather to discuss the book, ask questions and receive answers from professionals. Prior to that, the book will be given to women free of charge to read and come prepared to the focus group discussion and to ask educated questions. In the informal atmosphere of the focus group gathering, women will feel comfortable to ask questions and get answers to the problems they face in everyday life concerning their health. This will give them the opportunity to learn more about scientifically proven and medically correct explanations that will help them to make the best possible decisions about their health and the health of their families. The book will remain in their possession as a companion to turn to later when needed.

It is expected that women, participants of the focus groups, will share their experiences and new knowledge with their families, friends, co-workers and acquaintances and this is how the awareness will be raised and the knowledge will be spread in the communities for the benefit of all.

The Global Academy welcomes contributions to purchase books for women and to organize more focus groups. Please click on the Contact Us page to contact the Academy and to provide donations. The Global Academy for Women's Health is a tax exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

June 2008
The Global Academy for Women's Health supported the BioSciCon Team for Telecytopathology to presenta a poster at the Innovative Corridor of the 2008 BIO Convention, June 17-20, San Diego, CA, The title of the presentation is A tool for integration of cytology, HPV screening and telecytopathology.

April 2008
The Global Academy for Women's Health Team participated with an abstract entitled Ask for women' opinion first on FASEB Experimental Biology, 2008. Today's Research: Tomorrow's Health. San Diego, California, April 5-9, 2008.

November 2007
Drs Markovic participated in the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Cytopathology held in Huston on November 2-6, 2007. They presented the results of the application of MarkPap technology and its prospective in telecytopathology.