Newsletter 22

Thanks to support from SPIDER initiated in 2006, the Biomedical Engineering Department (MTA) at Karolinska University Hospital has taken a major step to internationalize telemedicine and e-health activities, and to establish collaboration with emerging regions. Based on the financial support obtained from SPIDER for the "ICT in rural healthcare in Tajikistan" called the TeleMedISTAN project, MTA together with ShifoCom Center in Tajikistan have established a telemedicine testbed and communication links between two rural hospitals and a city hospital in northern Tajikistan. The scope was to provide people-centered communication and exchange of second opinion between rural and city doctors, in order to increase rural knowledge capacity building, and to increase the quality of healthcare services to rural patients. Telemedicine testbed environment established in Tajikistan will further allow evaluation and implementation of new healthcare processes and services provided to rural areas.

In recent years, Tanzania has declared its commitment to embrace ICT within its public sector. Indeed, the government has made extensive efforts to keep its promise of going towards e-governance, as recent evidence shows (for instance in the National vision 2025, where ICT has been cited as a key driver of national socio-economic development); there has been a pronounced increase in investments in ICT in the public sector in particular within ministries, departments and agencies. There is a need to strengthen ICT capacity at management level of the Tanzanian public administration. A concerted effort to raise the awareness of the targeted managers would increase the yield of other investments already made in e-governance, and facilitate communication between ICT professionals and business managers.

SPIDER's assignment from the Inter-American Development Bank, to create a framework for evaluating one-to-one computing initiatives in education is progressing successfully. In the context of this assignment, four experts from the our university network from Stockholm University, Umeå University and Örebro University visited Uruguay and partners from Plan CEIBAL. Plan CEIBAL is the first one laptop per child project in the world to be implemented at a national level. The project is carried out during 2008 and through it each primary school pupil in all the public schools of the country receives an XO computer.

The 3rd Annual International Postgraduate Symposium was held in Finland at the University of Joensuu, 7-9 of September 2008. The focus on the third symposium was on ICT4D research, including private sector initiatives and new developmental policy approach of Finland.

At the end of August, during meetings with the Ministry of ICT and the Swedish Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, it was agreed that SPIDER would host a delegation from the Ugandan Parliament and Ministry of ICT to visit Sweden. The purpose would be to study the potential of a well-developed eSociety, such as Sweden, where the country virtually stops if the internet were to go down. Not only does the Swedish government and parliament use ICT as a tool to increase transparency, communicate with the citizens and provide access to online services, but the average citizens of Sweden also pays the bills online, declares  taxes via e-mail or SMS, refers to online services such as http://www.eniro.se/  for finding a telephone number, accessing maps for a certain area or to get the information on best route by public transport or by own car from one address to another.

Dr. F.F. Tusubira, ag CEO of UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking in Africa, visited Sweden at the end of September. On the 17th of September some members of the SPIDER network had the opportunity to listen to his presentation about the current development of infrastructure in East Africa and the new opportunities that the national data infrastructure and connectivity to the international submarine ESSAy cable would bring. Currently, a 1 mb connection costs up to several thousand dollars per month as most connectivity is provided through satellite with little competition. It is believed that the new developments will bring down the cost substantially within the next few years and bring access opportunities to many more people. 

In response to the needs for onsite ICT expert assistance in developing countries, SPIDER sends skilled and motivated junior ICT experts to organizations in developing regions. The developing country gains from knowledge transfer, whilst the individual experts broaden their horizons and learn to work in challenging environment with limited resources.

In August of 2008, Dr. Mannan Mridha, the project coordinator of the rural ICT Centre at Nohata visited the local project partners. During the trip, Dr. Mridha noticed growing interest among the pupils that are taking part in the project. The project was initiated two years ago with SPIDER funding and promotes access to medical information for the rural health care providers.

The International Network for Post Graduate Students in the Area of ICT4D (IPID) and Karlstad University invited IPID members to a graduate course in development theories. The course, an introduction in development theories and a wish to define ‘D' in ICT4D was offered due to the high demand from the IPID members.