ICT goes all out to fight COVID-19
The federal government has put its best foot forward in using ICT tools to determine the COVID-19 challenges and has recently induced board popular mobile applications and locally-developed answers to control the damages due to the pandemic.
"So far, we have customised and launched a bunch of solutions partnering with global communication platforms and today we can predict what will be the scenario after 15 days," said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for information and communication technology.
The ICT division of the government has brought partnerships with all four popular mobile communication applications -- Messenger, WhatsApp, Imo and Viber -- and offers different services using the channels.
As part of a number of initiatives, the ICT division yesterday declared its partnership with Viber, which includes 1.5 crore active users in Bangladesh, and through online self-assessments, users is now able to find out if they are running the risks of coronavirus infections.
"We earlier launched coronavirus assessment tools on Messenger plus some websites but our target is to offer ICT support to all the citizens of the country and that's why we have introduced the same service on Viber with considerable information," Palak said.
About 1.67 lakh persons have up to now taken services from a government website - livecoronatest.com, said Ashraf Abir, managing director and ceo of MCC Ltd, an area ICT firm that developed the site.
"We have shared all the contacts with the Directorate General of Health Services and doctors are talking with the patients who seem to be to bear high risks of contagion," Abir said.
Palak said there are options to call 333 or 16263 and use other platforms of the government to get coronavirus-related information and services.
Earlier the federal government sent short messages to mobile phone users and launched an interactive voice response service for the same purpose, he added.
Gathering all the details in a data analytics platform, the federal government is inching towards new estimation through the utilization of artificial intelligent and big data analytics, Palak added.
"A great number of local data analytics professionals with the support of some non-resident Bangladeshi are trying to get a concept what the near future holds for all of us," he said.
The state minister said though there is absolutely no data privacy act in the united states, users shouldn't worry about privacy protection as there will be no leakage of information.
Within the next phase, the government must choose contact tracing, a way used to slow down the spread of infectious outbreaks, according to Palak.
The ICT division earlier launched bot on the WhatsApp platform to disseminate coronavirus-related information easily and introduced a healthcare call centre on Imo for 22 lakh Bangladeshi expatriates moving into Saudi Arabia.
The federal government is taking support from Facebook and Google to spread the government's messages on coronavirus.
Palak said they are now trying to set up place a mechanism to perform educational programmes on mobile phones as schools are closed because of the pandemic.
