The School of Pharmacy in the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) hosted a satellite Open Conference for 2018 (OpenCon UHAS 2018) under the theme “Empowering the Staff and students to Advance in Open Access, Open Education, Open Science, Open data and Open Labware“. OpenCon 2018 UHAS took place on Wednesday 28th February, 2018 at the permanent campus of the University.

OpenCon is an accessible platform that encourages the sharing of thoughts, scientific data, innovative ideas and learning of new discoveries to enable either amateurs or professionals to create tools or write and publish credible journals and to assist participants such as Lecturers, Students (undergraduates & post graduates), Technical Staff, Security Personnel, Librarians, Information Scientists, Researchers and members of the public to have the opportunity to craft new inventive ideas. This lays premise for new initiatives and collaborations so as to help evolve analytical skills, mobilize action toward a more open system for distributing global information from scholarly and scientific research to educational materials and digital research data. ‘OpenCon 2018 UHAS’ is at the pivot of expanding the citizenry of thousands of students and early career academic professionals from across the world working to create an open system for research and education.

The Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor, Professor Seth Owusu-Agyei, in his welcome address, acknowledged the organizers of the program. As the keynote speaker, he shared his experiences with reference to his days as a student and how difficult it was to access literature materials, laboratory tools, data or internet in order to receive and send information thus making it a challenge to acquire the best kind of education on scientific researches. He was excited about the new era of OpenCon that has the potential of making knowledge advancement easier, allowing access to immediate worldwide barrier-free data, among others.

The programme comprised video streaming, panel discussions, interactive workshops and exhibition of the 3D-printed and basic laboratory equipment.

The Dean, School of Pharmacy, Professor Clement Adeleke Adebajo, stated the purpose of the OpenCon and their expectation as a school in his speech. The Chairman of OpenCon 2018 UHAS, Mr. Jonathan Jato looks forward to organizing the OpenCon every academic year with the hope of expanding to an International Advocacy platform. He said his team will be doing periodic interactions through electronic mail with the participants to enable them assist and support each other in the scientific world of developing a concrete theory and research to back their discovery.

Present at the programme were Dr. Daniel Abaye (Dean of Students), Mr. David W. Adzovie (Director of Human Resource, UHAS), Mr. Cedric Dorkenoo (School Officer, School of Pharmacy), Mr. Jonathan Jato (Chairman of OpenCon) and other facilitators .