State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Telecom companies in Pakistan are seen working towards the social improvements in the society under their CSR activities.

The popular ones from last year include:

• Telenor Khuddar Pakistan initiative for the persons with disabilities.
• Ufone Child Healthcare Initiative which will revamp Children Ward and Children OPD in major hospitals nationwide with the goal of making it more hygienic and comfortable. Ufone has started with a revamp of Children Ward/OPD at the Federal Government Services Hospital, Islamabad commonly known as Polyclinic.
• Warid’s GIVE and National Polio Immunization Drive with Rotary Club.

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Telecos have taken keen interest in the welfare and social issues of Pakistan. Earlier we had seen Telenor with its Khuddar Pakistan Program, which pioneered work for the disabled and GIVE, a Warid Telecom initive to support charitable causes.

This time Warid has join hands with Rotary International to create awareness of the on-going National Polio Immunization Drive.

Warid Telecom, in its efforts to make Pakistan “Polio Free” has joined the awareness campaign to fight aggressively against Polio. With an ambition to eradicate polio from Pakistan the Rotary Club members in Pakistan have started with National Polio Immunization Drive all over the country from 12th to 14th October, 2009. President of Pakistan has inaugurated the Polio NID at President House and the volunteers would go to every home to give the children Polio drops. Nearly 35 million children under 5 years of age are expected to be immunized in the 3 days campaign.

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A recent article talks about the rise in demand of business applications for doctors and health-care professionals. These apps provide reference guides, lab results and at times the vital signs of patients. With reminders, alerts and other ways to get quick snippets of information, these can be very handy for doctors.

Pagers have long reigned in hospitals, where they are prized for their dependability. But with doctors treating more patients and hospitals facing pressure to be more efficient, companies like Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. see an opportunity to peddle their devices.

Last month, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, Calif., started a trial with Apple and Epic Systems Corp., a provider of health-care information systems, to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone.

Stanford is studying ways to use the devices to reduce the risk of error as patient care is increasingly handed off from one doctor to another, says Pravene Nath, chief medical information officer.

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Have a great idea and the credentials to get it done but need resources or partnership with a large organization? Here’s an offer which may help. As part of a program called TechQuest, Alcatel-Lucent is seeking applications from wireless / mobile technology experts for applications in the areas of public safety, entertainment, eHealthcare and eLearning. This program, TechQuest, is a match maker between companies and innovators. This program is managed by an organization called MTBC in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. It is a good model for telecom companies to attract expert innovators and researchers. Here’s how the program works:

Through TechQuest, small tech companies, university researchers, and industry technologists, the Innovation Providers, have an opportunity to present their technology-based ideas and business plans to a major company, an Innovation Seeker, from the Dallas/Ft.Worth area. Those connections may result in technology licensing, funding, a customer/supplier relationship or a strategic partnership.

Here’s the information about this TechQuest program from Alcatel-Lucent. More information about the process and other TechQuest programs is provided at the MTBC site. Note that the Innovation Providers don’t have to be from Dallas area.

Problem Statement
The bandwidth of mobile uplinks and downlinks as well as data latency parameters promise to be much improved over currently available 3G services with the advent of LTE and 4G wireless broadband technologies. Alcatel-Lucent is seeking applications and services that will benefit from this improved connectivity especially in these key areas:

• Public Safety
• Media and Entertainment
• eHealthcare
• eLearning

Background Information:
Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Fourth Generation wireless networks (4G) will provide much higher data rates for mobile devices and applications than existing solutions. The LTE specification is defined and telecommunications equipment vendors are already executing contracts with carriers to deploy LTE gear. The definition of 4G is a bit more nebulous as standards are still being defined; however 4G has objectives of 100Mbits/s bandwidth between any two points in the world (although much higher rates have been lab tested) and support of IPv6.

More information on LTE specifications can be found at www.3gpp.org/article/lte.

I am sharing a paper I came across at Cisco mobility community site. This site, sponsored by Cisco, aims to provide a venue for education and to encourage conversations about mobile technologies such as 4G, WiMAX etc and related business, policy and social aspects. Anyone can join the site and participate.

The paper is titled “Expanding the Reach of Health Care in Developing Nations with WiMAX.” Here’s the direct link to the pdf. It talks about various case studies of using WiMAX connectivity to expand and improve health care in developing nations. However there are no details about the costs and the infrastructure hurdles which are so critical to WiMAX.

The paper mentions a project in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, Cisco is working on a trial that combines satellite and WiMAX connectivity to mobile units that provide earlier oncological screening to rural patients. Female patients feel more comfortable seeking care in a familiar environment, close to their homes. Earlier screening allows doctors to detect breast cancer in women when it is still treatable.

As illustrated below, WiMAX may initially be used mainly as a backhaul technology to provide basic data and voice connectivity to clinics. At a later stage, mobile applications will take on a larger role as network coverage, low cost devices, and mobile telemedicine applications become available.

The paper lists the key benefits WiMAX brings to telemedicine as:

• True broadband connectivity (2–4 Mbps in the downlink, 0.5–1.5 Mbps in the uplink) to enable transfer of large data files and video applications. In cellular networks, uplink speeds are typically substantially lower, slowing down transmission from the mobile workers back to the hospital. WiMAX performance is achieved by using a new wireless interface with high spectral efficiency, and by using wider channels that can increase the overall network capacity.
• IP based technology, which brings lower complexity and costs in managing the network, facilitates the development of new applications or the adaptation of existing applications, and can be easily integrated within existing networks.
• Carrier grade reliability and security, due to the use of licensed spectrum and IP core network technology. WiMAX supports multiple Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) methods, Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS), Diameter, Advanced Encryption System (AES), and Privacy Key Management Protocol Version 2 (PKM v2). Security is crucial to ensure protection of patient and epidemiological data.
• Quality of Service (QoS) and traffic prioritization mechanisms, to give priority to latency sensitive applications such as voice and video. This increases the robustness of numerous telemedicine applications that rely on voice and video traffic.
• Lower cost?per?bit than cellular networks. This makes the technology affordable for network operators to deploy and for health care providers to use for telemedicine applications.
• A wide range of devices with WiMAX chipsets embedded along with WiFi, at a very low additional cost. This gives health providers greater flexibility in choosing the best?suited devices that are within their budget.

M-health initiatives continue to gain ground. The recent ICTD 2009 conference at Carnegie Mellon Qatar has some good case studies. Among other topics, the conference panels discussed the emerging opportunities in ICTD (Information and Communications Technology and Development ) as the result of the penetration of mobile telephony.

Dr. Artur Dubrawski, Director of the AutonLab at Carnegie Mellon University and Mr. Nuwan Waidyanatha, Senior Researcher and Project Director of LIRNEAsia in Sri Lanka, are presenting their collaborative project using mobile telephony. The project uses the T-Cube Web Interface, a tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University to visualize and manipulate large scale multivariate time series datasets, to support real-time bio-surveillance. “We are excited to present our project at this year’s conference”, says Mr. Waidyanatha. “Health workers in the field will input patient and symptom data into a form on their mobile phones, which will immediately update a central database. The database will be available to central health organizations, and is designed to support rapid detection and mitigation of bio-medical threats in developing countries by improving the response time to analyzing the data.” The program is currently in pilot in Sri Lanka and India. “We see many different applications for this type of program across other areas,” comments Dr. Dubrawaki. “We look forward to meeting the other delegates at the conference and presenting our program, with the intention to expand our own project to other fields as well as to learn about their technologies”.

Via: Zawya.com

Nokia has proved that it can not only connect but care too. The press release below from Nokia below says it all.

The Indus Hospital Research Center and Nokia Pakistan announced the successful implementation of INTERACTIVE ALERTS, an electronic surveillance system for pneumonia in Karachi at a press conference held at the Indus Hospital. The Interactive Alerts system was designed by Interactive Research and Development (IRD), in collaboration with the Next Billion Network program at the MIT Media Lab.

The Interactive Alerts system has been specifically developed to use the Nokia 6131 NFC phone for childhood pneumonia surveillance and referral in low-resource settings, although it can be easily extended to other diseases. At the time of the 6-week vaccination visit, children are given a radio frequency ID (RFID) tag in the form of a traditional bracelet. This tag provides a unique ID to the child, and parents are advised and encouraged to take sick children to participating general practitioner clinics or general hospitals in the program. At each encounter, the Nokia 6131 NFC phone is used to scan the child’s tag. Pertinent immunization, clinical and laboratory data is collected and posted to the server via GPRS in real-time, and can be viewed over a secure website.

The innovativeness of this approach is that it helps overcome the challenges of disease tracking and patient referral in settings where medical records and referral systems do not exit. The RFID bracelet provides unique identification, allowing health workers to verify identity and view basic medical records, and respond to emergencies quickly.

Pneumonia is a leading cause of childhood death in countries with high under-5 mortality rates. Invasive pneumococcal disease is the # 1 vaccine-preventable cause of death in children under 5 years of age. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 1 million children under 5 die each year due to pneumococcal diseases.

IRD has established pneumonia surveillance in Karachi in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), the Program for Appropriate Technologies in Health (PATH) and the Indus Hospital. The objective of collecting this data is to provide policy makers in Pakistan and in the region the information required for introducing appropriate and new vaccines against pneumonia for children.

Interactive Alerts was co-developed by IRD’s health informatics team, led by Omar Allawala (Director of Information Technology) and Julia Irani (IT Project Manager),and a team of researchers and students from the Next Billion Network at MIT. The MIT team proposed the idea of using the Nokia NFC phones, and produced an initial design and working prototype, from which the IRD team then developed the final product.

Commenting on the project, Damien Balsan, Director, Head of NFC Business Development Americas, Nokia said, “We believe in a world where connecting people to what matters empower them to make the most of every moment. NFC is one of the ways to define the Nokia vision in terms of community services. We are committed to this project to ensure its expansion to a greater geographical area.”

This is a very encouraging step, finally we are seeing some research oriented approach in the communication industry  of Pakistan. In my view IRD should come up with more projects of similar kinds and get Pakistani students on board to work along. Such initiatives will in turn acheive the main objective of all communication devices, i.e. serving the humanity in a better way!

WIRED magazine asked Vint Cerf about innovation and opportunities for entrepreneurs.  Interestingly Vint started by mentioning Google Apps, about which I wrote just a few days ago. Reality is that innovation and creation of new ideas is the only way out of current economic trouble. Vint also talks about how “capital is scarce and cautious” but the availability of seed money because it’s small amounts despite the high risk.

Here’s Vint Cerf’s response to the question about innovation in the areas of Energy, Health care and Education.

You have touched on three areas in which Google not only has interest but has already begun to express it. Google Apps for Education is a suite of applications intended to be helpful to higher level educational institutions but in the long run, I think Google has a role to play in helping to assemble relevant content for classroom use. It seems highly likely to me that even in its present posture, Google’s resources are being used for teaching purposes or to help students prepare homework.

Energy, health care and education are just three examples of areas in which information and information management are critically important. How are we using our energy? What appliances in homes or business are consuming the most energy? When do they consume it? Can the load be shifted? How efficient are these devices?

On the health-care side, health care is information. Diagnosis, treatment, patient history, knowledge of pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures — it’s all information. Our own personal medical records represent incredibly important information to each of us because it can be crucial in helping to diagnose or treat a medical condition. It might be needed in a hurry should there be a need for emergency treatment, especially at a hospital you have never been to before.

The United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Foundation have partnered to harness the power of mobile technology in support of United Nations programs across the globe. Since 2005 this £15 million Technology Partnership has funded the use of wireless communications to advance global health and disaster relief work, and to further public discourse about how wireless technology can address some of the world’s toughest challenges. In the latest report about mobiles for health development, the case study of HealthLine Pakistan, which I covered earlier, is included.

The potential to create a positive change is huge and I wish that Pakistan does more in this area.

This fourth publication, “mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World,” in our Access to Communications series evidences, through its research and selection of case studies, the potential of mHealth—the use of mobile communications (mobile phones and PDAs) for health services and information. This field has the potential to transform the approach to a variety of healthcare challenges in the developing world by accelerating the collection and storage of patient data, training rural professionals with health updates and guidance, and personalizing to new levels the process of patients receiving and engaging in available medical treatment.

Reference: mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World. Washington, D.C. and Berkshire, UK: UN Foundation-Vodafone Foundation Partnership, 2009.