LAHORE: Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) Chairman and Information Technology University (ITU) Vice Chancellor Dr Umar Saif said Saturday that international researchers should come forward to find solutions to problems being faced by the developing world.
He said this while addressing the 9th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) 2017.
Dr Umar said that Pakistan had become the fifth largest populated country in the world in terms of internet usage with 37 million internet users on social media, including 32 million Facebook and Twitter users. He said these numbers were higher than the populations of Australia and New Zealand, adding that this trend confirmed the acceptability and adaptability of Pakistanis in regard to technology.
He also said that PITB had very effectively gathered and digitalised the data of 50,000 schools and five million farmers in the province of Punjab, which was accessible to the ICTD community to find solutions to the problems being faced in agriculture, poverty alleviation and rural development.
Dr Saif informed that the ITU was established five years ago, adding that the university now had 900 students with 90 faculty members. Convocation of ITU’s first batch of graduates was scheduled to be held on December 17, he added.
Dr Sania Nishtar, a keynote speaker of ICTD, said that the need for deployment of technology in the health sector was helping health workers to fulfil their responsibilities in a better way. Artificial intelligence was superior to human intervention in pathology, she added.
Dr Sania said that serialisation of medicine with QR code could help in combating fake drugs, which would be a great service to humanity. ICTD emphasised on action, evidence and implementation, in order to improve the quality of life for people, she added.
It is important to mention here that ICTD’s 9th conference was organised in Pakistan for the first time. The four-day conference would conclude on Sunday.