~FurSid

1. Have received emails from a number of industry people in response to my call for volunteers. My thanks to each one of you. Although I have not responded individually to each one, I have made the database accessible to Azhar Rizvi and he and his team will be calling on you for assistance in the areas that you identified.
2. Sabeen, Azhar Rizvi of THK Solutions has a Patient Management System. He will be calling Ejaz and arranging for its implementation in the medical camps.

3. Azhar is also working out of Rawalpindi/Islamabad on a Telemedicine initiative. I am sharing some of the details of his email to Shahida Saleem of Catco, Kamil Hasan of Intel and me. We are part of a small group that has been collaborating on this and other ICT based initiatives. If any of you are able to add any value to what Azhar is spearheading, please let me know. I would especially request our colleagues in Islamabad to offer any on-the-ground assistance that they can.

1. MOIT has arranged 15 INMAR SAT PHONES with data transmission features for the telemedicine project.
2. I met Dr Asif Zafar Professor of surgery and consultant, Rawalpindi Medical College and his team. He is also the President of the Pakistan telemed Association. We have established a tele-medicine help desk at RMC. They have an equipped lab , broadband connectivity and a telemed software. The lab and software can be deployed immediately however the bandwidth needs to be upgraded. For this had a meeting with Paknet MD who has agreed to DISCUSS with junaid MD PTCL to upgrade and reconfigure the fiberoptic channel, currently inactive at RMC. This would give them highspeed connectivity with their international exchange at rawalpindi. With the activation of this link we would be able to create a hub for connecting international as well as domestic hospitals with the Hospitals and field surgical units in the effected areas.
5. Established a team of 3 doctors and one network person as core telemed team at RMC. This team would be responsible to coordinate with international/domestic hospitals and help them link with RMC, liaise with Paknet for creating Internet accounts and fixed IPs for the field hospitals, collect data and present it on the web from all the field hospitals and patients admitted at local hospitals.
6. Met DDG SCO Col Jamil and he is agreed to train our doctors thru ITC as master trainers For INMAR SETS and basic data communication skills. Have another meeting on monday to discuss other services that they can render, however based on my hour long meeting with him and his other team members they are already LOW on resources and may not be able to give concentrated support.
8. Have arranged thurya phones thru Nokia to be supplied to a team of doctors surgeons from DMC.
9. PAKNET has committed its network and personnel in azad kashmir n isb/rwp to assist us in this project.
10. AKU has agreed to be part of the project

WHAT WE NEED:
a.Immedialty need volunteers to establish a help desk at MOITT or at PM RC.
b. Hardware equipment, preferably 15 laptops w digital cameras in the first phase to go out with inmar sat phones to the field hospitals.
c.15 2-3 kva Generators set for recharging the laptops and sat phones.
d. 15 low density scanners.
e. 2-3 dual processor intel servers to upgrade server farm at RMC.

Intel has been asked to provide the laptops and servers. Need assistance with the rest of the stuff.

4. Dr. Zakiuddin Ahmed of Medisoft Telemedicine Ltd has been linked up with Azhar so that there can be a collaborative effort. A mobile surgical unit is being brought in by Dr. Zaki that can be added to the existing equipment being used. I would like to thank Atiq or E-Commerce gateway for connecting us with him.

5. Syed Ahmad, CEO, Digital Prodigy (Pvt) Ltd has offered to provide expertise for project management and development in telemedicine application. This could include remote patient consultations and online effective resource management.

6. We have also got together a requirement document for a web
application that will incorporate various relief activities so that
there is some cohesiveness to the operations.

However IBM has a Relief Management System - Sahana - that was developed in Sri Lanka during the Tsunami. It will be looked at today so that it can be set up at the PM Secetariat and at the relief sites.

Sri Lankan’s Chamindra de Silva and another volunteer developer have arrived in Islamabad, as has a team from IBM, to deploy Sahana that is a Free and Open Source Software disaster management
system that handles missing/displaced persons, camp management, assistance, trading system, etc. These are the lead developers for the same system which was used in Sri Lanka to co-ordinate aid for the
Tsunami disaster.

P@SHA has offered its assistance. PSEB, Open Source Resource Centre, International Open Source Network UNDP-IOSN are already assisting them in Pakistan.

More information on Sahana:
http://sahana.sourceforge.net/
http://news.info-share.net/?p=8

7. Intel has announced a donation of US$1 million towards the Earthquake Relief Fund and is going to match all donations made by Intel staff worldwide. Kamil Hasan has also volunteered hardware and networking equipment that we may need to move forward with initiatives.

8. A team of ASP.NET programmers is being put together today to work with the UBL team to provide a web application requested by the PM Relief Cell.

9. According to Dr. Aamir Matin of MoITT, Telecom operators have expanded their services to cover
AJK. This is what we have learnt from the Ministry:

a. Only the SCO (Special Communications Organization) has the license to
operate in Azad Kashmir. This has been waived for two months, so that all
the mobile phone companies and the WLL companies are now free to provide
their services throughout the region. The companies are already
charging into the area.

b. VSAT telephony equipment has been ordered and is on its way. ITU, the
World Bank and WEF are paying for this. Solar powered batteries have also
been ordered.

c. PAKSAT, which is Pakistan’s own satellite, and which has enough free
bandwidth, will be used to provide connectivity to these VSAT phones, which
means that operational costs will be zero.

All of the above will be coordinated by SCO.

Just thought I would keep all of you up-to-date so that if anyone can assist in any way, please do contact us so that we can put you in touch with our teams.

Best regards,
Jehan Ara
President
P@SHA