Use of IT in healthcare will increase: Minister

Tribune News Service

Mohali, November 22

Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said today that Punjab was the first state in the country to use information technology (IT) in healthcare with the help of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Sidhu was here to attend the inaugural session of two-day second International Conference on Futuristic Trends in Network and Computing Technologies at C-DAC, Mohali. He said the Punjab Government had already started working on the ‘Digital Punjab Vision’ and this conference was in tune with latest trend and technologies. “We all know that in today’s era, information is the new growth engine and drives all economies in the world of cut-throat competition,” he said. The Health Minister said networking and computing technologies laid the foundation for Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

Sidhu gave the credit to C-DAC for realising state government’s agenda of using IT in all domains. He said 23 district hospitals were using C-DAC telemedicine for the past 15 years. Sidhu said very soon, the role of IT in healthcare would increase beyond new horizons and decks have been cleared for many hospitals of the state to leap towards computerisation.

The conference has been organised by C-DAC, in collaboration with Jaypee University of Information Technology (JUIT), Waknaghat, Himachal Pardesh.

Dr PK Khosla, Executive Director, C-DAC, shared a glimpse of C-DAC activities regarding robotics, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, telemedicines, commercial drones and others. He said security challenges created global opportunities and India would be able to make full use of the opportunity.