Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Thursday offered an all-out technical and financial support to any organisation or association active in the field of healthcare for provision of tele-medicine to the masses.
"We are both source- as well as capacity-rich and my ministry can go any length to provide satellite capacity and infrastructure support to ensure e-health facility to people in the far-flung areas where the quality of healthcare is far from satisfactory," he said in his keynote address on the second day of the 'Health Expo 2006' currently underway at the Convention Centre, says a press release.
He said that deregulation and liberalisation of telecom sector had brought about a significant reduction in the cost of telecom infrastructure, which was necessary to be put in place to provide major services such as tele-medicine.
The state of healthcare in the country's remote areas was very poor where a physician had to grapple with a crowd of 300-400 patients every day without the support of consultants who were concentrated in major urban centres, he said.
"E-health can provide a solution by building a bridge between physicians based in the rural fold and the consultants running sophisticated health centres in the urban areas," he said.
Awais said his ministry had already provided material and financial support for the automation of hospital management system at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and had also offered to replicate this system at all the federally administered hospitals.
"I am waiting for the day when any one of the provinces picks up this idea and replicates it at all district headquarters hospitals which can become the hub for provision of tele-medicine," he said.
The minister also pledged to make available huge funds from the Universal Service Fund (USF) housed in the Ministry of Information Technology to support any initiative for e-health.
He said one of the key programmes for which the USF would be used in the coming few months, was the proposed establishment of tele-centres across the country to drive the growth of e-medicine and other e-services.
Among other speakers and health experts, who addressed the session, were Tariq Badshah, member IT at IT Ministry and Dr Haroon Khan who spoke on 'Future of hospitals: Pims as a success story'. Professor Rashid Jooma also gave a presentation on the activities and achievements of his flagship tele-medicine project 'Hope' in the interiors of Sindh.
The session was also addressed by Dr Faisal Murad, Dr Salman, Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed, Dr Mursalin and Dr Bilal Hashmat who read out papers and gave presentations on different issues related to health informatics.