December 01, 2006	Friday	Ziqa'ad 9, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Thursday offered technical and financial support for any organisation or association active in the field of healthcare for provinding tele-medicine to the masses.

“We are both source- and 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 a keynote address to an interactive session held to discuss dynamics of ‘health informatics’ here.

He said the 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.

He said 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.

“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.

Mr Leghari said his ministry had already provided material and financial support for the automation of hospital management system at PIMS and had also offered to replicate the 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 housed in the Ministry of Information Technology to support any initiative for e-health facility.