Dr. Purshotam Bhandari, Phurba Wangdi and Sujit Kumar Rai have been recognised as this Year’s ICT Champions. Bhutan Telemedicine Group and Automatic Repository Information System for Community Health were their outstanding contribution to the society through innovation in ICT and Telecommunications.
Dr. Purshotam Bhandari, a child specialist at the Gelegphu Hospital initiated Bhutan Telemedicine Group, a closed group on Facebook. The group which started in 2010 with 10 members now boasts of over 200 members consisting of doctors and health workers.
“The main purpose for starting this group was to practice Telemedicine and make access specialist health care in places where there are no specialist.” Dr. Purshotam Bhandari said health workers and doctors in the periphery take photographs of x-rays, lab reports, and clinical details for the patient and post it on the Facebook page which is seen by the doctors and other colleagues in other parts of the country. “They then advice the health workers. Where there is no health workers the patients have the advantage of getting specialist advice over this Facebook page”
Phurba Wangdi and Sujit Kumar Rai who works in a private firm voluntarily developed an Automatic Repository Information System for community health. It is being used by the National Referral Hospital.
Sujit Kumar Rai said the system helps record data of pregnant women from five months till she gives birth. He said after the birth the medical data a child is recorded till they are five years old.
The event was organised by the Department of IT and Telecom under the Ministry of Information and Communications.
