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Seminar on Healthcare Management System & ICT in Developing Countries at DCS-UBIT
A seminar on Health Care Management System (HCMS) & ICT in Developing Countries was held at UBIT (DCS), University of Karachi in coordination with Staffordshire University, Department of Computer Engineering and Technology & Health Sciences Department.
The objective of the seminar was to utilize ICT in health care management system in the context of developing countries to provide effective health services at low cost through exploiting of information and communication technologies. In the sector of health services, H.C.M.S can be used to implement several new medical services like Remote Diagnosis, Patient Central Database, Tele/Audio Conferencing and Health Card System. Prof. Dr. Aqil Burney emphasized the importance of ICT especially in service sector such as HCMS which needs urgent attention in Pakistan and told at present, there is digital divide in this field of Health & IT and presented a model for developing countries.
Dr. Zahid Bashir of Agha Khan Medical University spoke on HCMS and use of ICT in Pakistan and told possible medical services being provided using ICT in Pakistan. He further pointed out various primary health facilities, which can be provided to common man using mobile communication technology, it costs US $0.30 per call to contact doctor on phone in Pakistan, $1.25 in India and $0.21 in Bangladesh. He further pointed out usability, cost, habits, education and some of the obstacles in HCMS & ICT.
Kamran Ahsan, Research scholar and teacher in the Department of Computer Engineering and Technology, Staffordshire University, UK and working in HCMS & ICT, spoke on health care services improvements and research opportunities in Pakistan. He further stressed that there is an urgent need of capacity building as far as HR is considered for ICT in health Care sector such that health care should be accessible & economical for a common person and emphasized the importance of context based knowledge management in health care systems in developing countries like Pakistan and shared his experiences in HCMS in UK. Nadeem Mahmood, Syed Asim Ali and Zain Abbas from Department of Computer Science, UBIT also gave presentations.
At the end of the seminar it was recommended that the research group on the web should be developed for health care management system in Pakistan using ICT. A network of the experts should be formed. Research coordination between Karachi University and Staffordshire University and other British universities should be initiated.
