Advances in the use of ICT in various applications such as medicine and business have started as part of the Video Conference Project. This was initiated by MININFRA and the former RITA now RDB in conjunction with Huawei Technologies Ltd three years back as a pilot project. Initially it was meant for six sites that had been identified in the first phase and the video conferencing system was installed. However, e-health as a provision within the practice of medicine locally became a necessity for RDB and the ministries plus other government institutions after a realization that our referral hospitals would benefit from this by using the same technology for telemedicine and distance learning which has been part of the video conference project. It is for this matter that three hospitals namely King Faisal, CHUK and CHUB were later included in the pilot phase. This project has been more beneficial and thus operational to the Ministry of Health sites where it is being utilized in three teaching hospitals and in what has come to be known as the telemedicine project. This is because all the teaching hospitals are equipped with the video conference system and interconnected with fiber optic cable network. RBD/IT have also installed this similar system in three provincial headquarters. It intends to soon to install such technologies in other two for easy communication between the local and central government without the need to travel which is cost effective and more productive. RDB is in the in the process of buying more video conferencing facilities to be deployed in other sites which include high courts all over the country, universities and others. With the present video conferencing system in the country , RDB/IT was able to broadcast the parliamentary elections in provinces live on TVR last year for the first time in conjunction with ORINFOR. Ends
