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Recently, PM Gilani had asked for setting up a network of telemedicine in the flood affected areas to deal with diseases caused due to contaminated flood water. He made this request while chairing the 25th meeting of Board of Directors of Universal Service Fund (USF) held today at the Prime Minister House.
The approval for projects worth Rs.10 billion for the current financial year has been given. This also includes setting up telemedicine networks around Rawalpindi, Karachi and Multan. For this reason Holy Family Hospital (Rawalpindi), Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre (Karachi) and Nishtar Medical College (Multan) will be interconnected with 12 remote sites for building up three telemedicine networks.
These remote sites will have facilities of digital stethoscope, digital derma-scope, portable ultrasound, digital ECG and customized telemedicine software that will connect patients from their hometowns to the specialists in these three hospitals. The plan is also there to expand the telemedicine networks to other flood affected areas.
Besides this, other telecom projects of broadband, fiber optic cables and educational/tele-centers have also been approved to be initiated in the country. This initiative was started last year, but as of yet, has not seen its full light of day. There needs to be transparency in the biding process and execution of these diverse projects.
To make these projects work successfully, collaboration with countries having better information technology expertise is important, especially for state of the art IT learning institutions for progressive e-agriculture, e-commerce, e-government, e-education, e-health and e-disaster management.
