ISLAMABAD - President Dr Arif Alvi on Friday called for establishing primary healthcare telemedicine clinics to provide equitable facilities to the population living in remote areas of Pakistan.
The President made these remarks while chairing a follow-up meeting on tele-health here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
He said that the tele-health services had played a very useful role in disseminating information regarding Covid-19 pandemic by providing guidelines and educating the people about the disease.
He underscored the need for investing in tele-medicine and strengthening the capacity of health professionals in the fields of public health and artificial intelligence to analyze various datasets and predict outbreaks and epidemics.
The Ministry of NHSRC gave a presentation about the tele-health and proposed various solutions for the promotion of tele-health in Pakistan. The President said that there was a need to transform health delivery sector of the country by using digital infrastructure to ensure connectivity among health professionals and patients to provide consultative services to the latter.
He emphasized the need to develop a legal framework to promote virtual care network in the country. The Ministry of NHSRC informed the meeting that the Regulatory Legal Framework would be finalized in six weeks.
The meeting was attended by SAPM on Health Dr. Faisal Sultan, Secretary NHSRC, Aamir Khawaja, Consultant, Digital Technology, Tania Aidrus, Director General Health, Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar, Director General, National Information Technology Board (NITB), Faisal Iqbal Ratyal and other senior government officials.