KARACHI: The Covid-19 pandemic opens new dimensions of thinking in every walk of life, especially the healthcare industry which now requires new ways of working, new methods of communication, and new solutions to problems and innovative solutions.
“Digital health in the current era is more than just on-line (virtual) visits and distant patient monitoring. The COVID-19 pandemic primarily redesigned the health care system and highlighted the important gaps that could be problematic in the future. The healthcare workers have to re-think the architectural models and we have to move in a maintainable way,” said experts during a day-long online international seminar on “Challenges for the Healthcare in Pandemics”, which was organized by COMSTECH in collaboration with the IEEE Educational Activities Karachi Section at the LEJ University of Karachi. Around 150 participants attended the online session around the world of which 35 participants were physically present in the seminar.
One of the speakers, Dr Wasswa William Senior Lecturer at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology, emphasized the need to develop an AI-powered digital health platform to reduce the risk factor. He mentioned that globally cervical cancer ranks as the fourth most prevalent cancer affecting women with 5,27,624 women diagnosed with the disease in 2019 and 2,65,672 dying from it every year. He shared that over 80 percent of cervical cancer cases occur in less developed countries of which the highest incidences are in Africa.
Today, the delivery of oncology has become very complex, with a heavy reliance on technology, not only for the accurate diagnosis of the patient but also for the delivery of the agreed treatment and patient follow-up.
Meanwhile, the Coordinator-General COMSTECH Prof Dr Muhammad Iqbal Chowdhry said that in 2020 we face multiple changes in the healthcare sector. We have witnessed that 300 million peoples died in a year due to Covid-19 and there is also a great loss of economy during the situation.
He mentioned that the estimate lost during this pandemic was US$50 million. He urged that science and technology play a markable role and said that during Covid-19 pandemic technologies play an important role from detection to the vaccine.
Professor Andrew Ware of the University of South Wales, shared that big data and machine learning have now become more important in every walk of life. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were not focusing on online tools, but now we strongly depending on online and digital platforms.
He observed that at the same time ‘working from home’ has, for many, become the norm. This new normal has acted as a fillip for the progress of technology that enables remote connectivity. Change in the way we work, rest, and play have been necessitated at lightning speed. The past 12 months have highlighted the need for digital inclusion. While many have benefited from the life of the new normal, others have been significantly disadvantaged.
Prof Jim Buckley, a senior lecturer, CSIS Department, University of Limerick, Ireland mentioned that as the Covid-19 pandemic continues into its second year of global disruption, countries that have reduced the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are faring better in healthcare outcomes and economic terms.
He narrated that controlling its spread relies, in part, on “contact tracing” which aims to rapidly identify the close contacts of infected people so that they could be advised to limit their social interactions and get tested, thereby reducing the onward spread of the virus.
He said that the novel contact tracing applications could potentially simplify the laborious work of contact tracing and are thus a tempting prospect, particularly given their ability to identify close-contacts who are unknown to cases and their ability to identify contacts-contacts near instantaneously.
In the closing session, the former Collector Customs, Advocate-Custom, and Taxation and the guest of honor Dr Shahab Imam highlight the importance of technology during pandemic situations.
He said we should take advantage of AI and machine learning especially in the healthcare industry. Pakistan got the best talents in terms of our young professionals and we could develop the applications to solve our problems.