Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) to provide Business Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to facilitate telemedicine project for public hospitals acrossPakistanthrough the Electronic Government Directorate.
Telemedicine project aims to provide telemedicine facility to the grass root level population as a part of ‘proof of concept technology demonstration’ programme. This telemedicine facility will connect the district hospitals and health centres with super Specialty hospitals in major cities to provide expert consultation to the needy and underserved population. People living in rural/remote areas ofPakistanwill be able to seek advice and treatment from specialist doctors of major hospitals in big cities. The project will also contribute towards professional development of doctors working in rural/remote hospitals, who will be able to get guidance, advice, and training in advance diagnostics and treatment methods through interaction with specialist doctors in urban hospitals.
According to a press release issued here on Wednesday, the Electronic Government Directorate has awarded PTCL with initial 15 sites for 1mb & 2mb DSL VPNs till June 2012 and it will add more hospitals in due course. PTCL’s high speed DSL VPN based service will offer connection media for establishing a VPN between different hospitals. PTCL VPN uses “virtual” connections routed through the secure private network to the remote hospitals at affordable costs.
PTCL infrastructure will facilitate tele-medicine services like tele-diagonistics, tele-consultation, and treatment for ENT, skin, chest, cardiology, and psychiatry. Specialists will be able to examine the patients, their medical history, test results, and vital signs like heartbeat, blood pressure, temperature, breathing etc by using electronic medical facilities over PTCL ICT infrastructure and VPN services. PTCL shall also facilitate in providing advance services like tele-surgery, tele-mentoring, and tele-critical care (Emergency, ICU).
SEVP Corporate Services Furqan Habib Qureshi while elaborating the effectiveness and usage of this service in the hospitals said that it will not only provide private and secure connectivity but will also enable different hospitals and their branches to interconnect remotely located branches in to an intranet and create an efficient fully meshed network providing any-to-any communication among them for the facilitation of the ailing patients.