Masterclass on Telemedicine
for Health Professionals

Dr Malila is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, at the University of Johannesburg, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. She holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biomedical Engineering and a PhD and MSc in Telecommunications Engineering.

Her work develops and evaluates digital health interventions for rural, remote and underserved communities, with a particular focus on telemedicine and mHealth, and she leads the Telemedicine and Connected Care research group at UCT. She was invited to speak on the role of AI in global health at the World Health Summit in Berlin in October 2024. Her research spans digital health, telemedicine, mHealth and medical image analysis, AI, and 5G/6G research infrastructures; she supervises several master’s and doctoral students and collaborates with researchers internationally.

Professor Munodawafa is Professor of Community Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and Partnership Coordinator at Midlands State University, and Visiting Professor of Global Health at the School of Public Health, Thammasat University, Thailand. A public-health scholar and former senior technical and programme manager at the World Health Organization, he served WHO’s African and South-East Asia regions for twelve years and contributed to emergency responses including the West African Ebola outbreak.

He holds a doctorate in Health Promotion and Education with further training in public administration and leadership. His research advances health-systems strengthening, community engagement, the social determinants of health, behavioural change, and the prevention and control of non-communicable disease. He chairs the Technical Advisory Board of the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV, and is the Africa Region Representative and Coordinator of the World Noncommunicable Disease Federation. He received the Outstanding Research Award in Health Sciences in 2026.

Dr Pérez-Ramos is a Puerto Rican social epidemiologist and implementation scientist focused on advancing health equity through digital innovation. He develops and evaluates mHealth tools — including telehealth and wearable technologies — to improve healthcare access for marginalised populations.

He leads the Participatory Research for Health Equity and Access Lab (The PR Lab) at the University of Rochester Medical Center, working with communities and global partners to co-create scalable, culturally relevant health solutions. At the University of Rochester he serves as a Faculty Senator, supporting institutional governance, research development and diversity initiatives, and he is Vice President of the Latino Caucus of the American Public Health Association. His work spans telehealth design, health-systems strengthening, workforce training and policy advising, emphasising that sustainable health interventions rely on trust, collaboration and community leadership.

Dr Makubalo is a South African epidemiologist, public health expert and health diplomat with extensive national and international leadership experience. She played an active role in shaping South Africa’s post-apartheid health sector reform policies and legislation. Most recently she served as Assistant Regional Director at the World Health Organization in Africa, shaping regional technical programmes; she was previously Director of Health Policy and Systems Research at WHO headquarters, and South Africa’s Health Diplomat to the United Nations.

At the National Department of Health she led work to strengthen health information systems and to implement digital health and e-health strategies for evidence-informed policymaking, and worked towards establishing telemedicine, telehealth and technology transfer initiatives to improve access to care. At WHO she established the Regional Health Data Hub, an integrated digital platform designed to strengthen interoperable health information systems and enable AI-supported analytics, predictive modelling, forecasting and precision public health for African countries. She holds a PhD in Community Medicine from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and was earlier a Research Fellow at the WHO Tropical Diseases Research Centre in Zambia and the South African Medical Research Council.

Dr Conrad is an experienced design-thinking practitioner and health innovation researcher known for her human-centred approach to complex healthcare challenges. Holding a PhD in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town, she works in empathy-driven research, systems thinking and collaborative problem-solving to create equitable, patient-centred solutions. She trained as a coach and Programme Lead at UCT’s Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking and is a certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator.

Since 2016 she has facilitated design tools across sectors including finance, biomedical engineering and public health. Her academic leadership includes convening UCT’s MPhil in Health Innovation and co-developing and lecturing its Health Innovation and Design course since 2015, as well as developing and teaching a design thinking module for the School for International Training Graduate Institute’s MA in Sustainable Development Practice. She has published widely and presented internationally on biotechnology, biochemistry, design thinking and community engagement.

Dr Motchon is a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, where he also earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering. With an interdisciplinary foundation in physics and computational modelling applied to healthcare, he recently joined the Telemedicine and Connected Care Research Group.

His research integrates fundamental physics and mathematics into the health sciences to develop computational tools for understanding, managing and predicting disease. He is currently working on AI-based tools that make complex medical concepts accessible to non-expert users, including doctors and healthcare providers, and is exploring digital twin models in telemedicine — a key frontier in modern medical research.