Bangladesh must tap huge potential of such technology to serve people in health, development sectors,The Daily Star roundtable told
Scope to use mobile technology for health sector is huge and everyone would have to find opportunities to use it properly for improvement of people's lives, said speakers at a roundtable yesterday.
They said mobile technology could be used more effectively in awareness campaigns related to health rather than traditional campaign tools such as news media or billboards. But internet speed was required to reach the target.
The roundtable titled “Turning the Future: Mobile Services and its impact on Health and Development Sectors in Bangladesh” was jointly organised by EATLApps.com, a concern of Advanced Technology Ltd (EATL), and The Daily Star at The Daily Star Centre on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue yesterday.
Ministers, regulators, current and former government high officials, academics, ICT experts, health administrators, development organisation officials joined the roundtable.
Key note speaker Nizam Uddin Ahmed, chief executive officer of EATL, said Bangladesh had the full potential to utilise mobile phone services to improve health and development indicators.
He said partnership and collaboration was essential between public and private sectors for optimum use of mobile services.
He said 80 percent farmers of the country use mobile phones for contact with buyers and sellers and 50 percent farmers sell their goods after direct contact with their buyers.
He said texting was very low as a large segment of the mobile phone users were illiterate. He suggested voice messaging for rural or marginal people and recommended introducing Unicode Bangla language for mobile phones.
Telecommunication minister Shahara Khatun said voice calls to create awareness was a very effective tool.
She said very soon the prime minister's voice would be delivered to the rural people by mobile phones urging them to avail the services of community clinics.
She said various mobile phone based services were being provided, including exam results, admission to educational institutions, job applications, and utility bill payments.
Information and Communication Technology Minister Mostafa Faruque Mohammad said texting was cheaper but effective.
He said very few people use this feature as the phones have English keys. Some type Bangla using English fonts, which creates a lot of confusion and contributes to distortion of Bangla pronunciations. “The experts should develop software for writing standard Bangla,” he said.
He also expressed the need for developing more Bangla apps for smartphones.
The chairman of telecom watchdog Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Sunil Kanti Bose said without robust and reliable infrastructure, various services of mobile phones could not be delivered. He said state of such infrastructure was not satisfactory in the country.
To keep the internet service affordable for underprivileged people, the government had created a social obligation fund with telecom companies' revenue to develop infrastructure, he added.
Salehuddin Ahmed, managing director of The Daily Star, said even though smartphones were very useful tools for the health services, smartphone penetration was still very low in Bangladesh due to poverty.
Roundtable moderator Brig Gen (retd) Shahedul Anam Khan, editor Oped and Strategic Issues of The Daily Star, said the goal of the roundtable was to find ways to bring various medical services to the people.
He said if people were not aware of public services, they cannot avail them and the media had a role in it.
EATL Managing Director MA Mobin said 97 percent of the people in Bangladesh have access to mobile phones while 65 percent people have their own phones.
He said mobile phones were the best means for awareness programmes such as vaccination, tax, election related message.
He said his company had developed health related mobile phone applications in Bangla and English languages.
The EATLApps mobile application store was launched in November, 2012. The site would also be used as an online marketplace for developers.
Former principal secretary to the prime minister Abdul Karim said to popularise mobile applications, the government would have to amend the ICT act, rule, and policies after sitting with stakeholders.
Director General of Health Service Khondhakar Md Shefyetullah said people could send complaints from 800 hospitals through texts to the central office while a designated officer monitors the complaints.
Around 100 complaints were filed each day, he said.
DG of the Prime Minister's Office Neelufar Ahmed said infrastructure was the main issue for digital progress and the government would do everything for its development.
State-run carrier Teletalk Managing Director Mujibur Rahman said 3G and high speed wireless internet service had created huge opportunity for content development.
Project Director of the Community Healthcare Project Makhduma Nargis said community clinics were established for rural people and mobile numbers of service delivery officials were put on walls of the clinics for emergency service 24/7.
“Mobile phones can help them a great deal with natal and post-natal services,” she said.
Md Iqbal Khan Chowdhury, additional secretary to the education ministry, said many doctors do not regularly attend their offices in rural areas. “Location tracking system would be a useful tool to deal with this problem,” he suggested.
Md Khalilur Rahman, assistant professor of Brac University, said, “The government offices still look very traditional. They have to be digitised first.”
While the speakers stressed that people need to be informed about healthcare and other services through texts, he interjected that there should be a limit to the number of messages one gets every day.
“The services won't be very useful for me if I get 100 messages a day,” he said.
Carrier Grameenphone Director Ishtiaq Hussain Chowdhury said service delivery speed would not be a problem after private mobile operators start 3G services. He said it was necessary to prioritise government's roadmap.
Another Grameenphone Director Taimur Rahman said it was not possible to connect all homes with optical fibre lines and wireless would have to be the means for providing fast internet.
Amzad Ali, executive director of development organisation HASAB, said the government spends billions on TB but due to lack of follow-up many patients become multi-drug resistant, which makes the disease very hard to cure.
He said the use of mobile phones to follow up on patients would be very useful.
Source: The Daily Star
