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WEEKLY PUBLICATION DEADLINE: 12 pm GMT Sunday. HOSPITAL COMPUTERISATION OFFERS POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVING DISEASE MANAGEMENTComputerising hospital management and information systems offers Africa a number of potential benefits. Sceptics rightly protest:’how can you even think about computers, when everything else is in a mess and there’s no money’. Perhaps these two positions are not as far apart as they seem. If African healthcare is to improve, it will obviously require greater resources. But even with greater resources, it will need improvements in management and administration to be able to handle increased resources. People capacity and training are almost as important as installing "kit". This week Helen Mellor of Elan Technologies describes how it computerised a group of hospitals in South Africa’s Northern Cape and the potential impact on the work of the hospitals. Elan Technologies’ integrated hospital information system, Oasis, was selected just over two years ago by South Africa’s Northern Cape Province Health Board to replace their existing paper patient records at hospitals across the province. The launch in March 2000 of the Oasis Electronic Patient Record System at the 514 bed Kimberley Hospital was rapidly followed by implementation at a further five hospitals, with the sixth South African Oasis site ­ Voortrekker Hospital, Calvinia - going live in May 2000. At its inauguration, the Northern Cape Health Minister E.D.Peters commented that Oasis will "provide readily available clinical data to the health care professionals, to facilitate effective patient care and treatment". Ms Peters complimented the Province’s selection board for having found a system which provides a "user-friendly environment for health workers, resulting in better health care for our people". Prior to the installation of Oasis across the Northern Cape, the only computerised system in place was an elderly, character-based patient registration system, Delta9, at Kimberley Hospital. As this system not was not Y2K compliant, the priority was to replace that system before 31 December 1999 with at least the same functionality of the old system. The other five hospitals relied totally on paper records. Following investigations into the Northern Cape hospitals’ systems and procedures, set-up of the system was performed. The entire customization of the system was achieved locally without any program changes needing to be performed within Oasis. Since only Kimberley had an existing computer system, it meant that implementation had to include basic PC training for 50% of users and Windows literacy training for 95% of users before users could be trained in the use of Oasis. The 374,000 existing patients on the Delta9 system were converted and loaded into Oasis, retaining the same patient identification. This conversion, which took about 15 hours to extract, convert and reload into Oasis, was performed on the weekend prior to implementation. Changeover to Oasis at Kimberley was a week ahead of target. Downtime between shutdown of the old system and startup of Oasis was only 30 minutes. Roll out of Oasis to the Gordonia, Kuruman, Springbok, De Aar and Calvinia Outreach Hospitals was completed smoothly and on time over the next four months. The core modules of Oasis implemented in the first phase were Master Patient Registration, Admissions, Transfers, Discharges, Patient Billing and Debtors. In order to provide meaningful Outpatient attendance statistics, it was decided to also implement certain of the Outpatient Booking module features. This has subsequently been very well accepted and also expanded to use more of the booking features. The success of this implementation cannot be underestimated. Kimberley Hospital and its six Outreach Hospitals serves patients across the whole of the Northern Cape Province, an area so large that it take some patients up to seven hours travel to reach hospital. Oasis now provides hospital staff with easily accessible information regarding patient admissions and an improved facility for administering hospital accounts. Further advantages are that doctors in the wards can quickly obtain results of tests and clinical notes which are almost immediately accessible throughout the hospital, while the management of patient bookings is streamlined. All of these contribute to a more effective treatment of the patient. Northern Cape Health Department can be proud that every milestone set since installation of Oasis has been reached on time and within budget. The outcome of their procurement compares favourably with previous unsuccessful projects in other South African provinces (for example, one province has retendered to replace a system which remained undelivered 4 years into the contract) and provides a model for future health system procurements. Future plans Following the success of this initial phase, the provincial Health Board is looking at ways of extending the functionality of their hospital information system. The Department of Surgery supplies a Surgical Team which regularly flies into each of the Outreach Hospitals and clinics. They will be the pilot for Phase II of the implementation which includes Theatre Management, Order Entry, Results Reporting and Case Note Tracking. Future developments under consideration at Northern Cape include the establishment of a Province-wide central repository of information. There is considerable interest in implementing Elan’s internet based e-oasis system for deployment of the system to all hospitals and clinics with access to the province-wide network. Deon Madyo, CEO of Kimberley Hospital Complex is keen to implement e-oasis. Deon says that "the potential for improving disease management by providing clinicians across the region with access to province-wide electronic health records is a very real proposition, now that all our hospitals have standardised on the Oasis system to manage their patient records" Elan Technologies is a British software company which specialises in developing advanced healthcare solutions. Their current customer base is in the United Kingdom, Italy, South Africa and the Middle East. Details of Elan’s products and services can be found on their website www.elan-technologies.com. ***********************************************
GDBC LAUNCHES SATELLITE OFFERING AFRICAN INTERNET CONNECTIVITYGlobal Data Broadcasting Corporation last week launched its broadband Internet Connectivity service that reaches speeds up to 45 MB, in Sub-Saharan Africa. GDBC’s service uses Ku band technology which will enable it’s customers to benefit from small sized antenna’s at their premises. GDBC offers both transmit / receive VSAT connectivity and receive only DVB connectivity. GDBC has teleport facilities in Martlesham, England with British Telecom, 6 October City, Egypt with Nile Sat, and Alexandria Egypt with Nile Sat. GDBC’s Uplink in Martlesham England uses a 15meter Antenna to provide error free service for both transmitting to and receiving from GDBC’s transponders on Panamsat and NileSat. Each teleport has redundant connections to the Internet Backbone. In Martlesham England we have 2 redundant DS-3 Connections to the internet backbone with British Telecom to deliver service to our customers. GDBC owns and manages a state-of-the-art satellite-based network for ISP backbone connectivity, value-added services, and IP multicasting. GDBC also offers SCPC, TDMA and DAMA single Hop connectivity to its customers. Using its network of leased satellite and fibber facilities, GDBC is able to provide high speed Internet access virtually to all of Africa, The Middle East, Indian Peninsula, and Europe, with speeds of up to 45 Mbps. In North Africa and The Middle East, GDBC is offering it’s service to home users, Soho’s, Cyber-cafes and corporate’s under the brand name: MenaSat (www.menasat.net) For more information: Email Global Data Broadcasting Corporation on info@gdbc.net ALCATEL EGYPT SIGNS 10 YEAR CONTRACT WITH SMART VILLAGEAlcatel Egypt has signed a 10-year rental contract with the Smart Village Company. According to the agreement, Alcatel Egypt will lease a total area of 6,200 square meters at a prime spot of the Smart Village. The Company plans to move all its divisions including its International Service and Software Center, its Training Centers and its Middle East Regional Headquarters, during the third Quarter of next year to the new premises. (source: www.menareport.com ) EGYPT’S COMMS MINISTRY TO OFFER E- PLATFORM FOR BUILDERS AND CONTRACTORSThe Ministry of Communications & Information Technology and the Egyptian Federation for Construction & Building Contractors signed today a five-year cooperation protocol aiming at modernizing and automating various projects of the Federation.The protocol aims at enhancing the quality of services offered to contractors; creating a platform for e-government and improving the quality of administration and monitoring within the Federation. The Protocol activities will focus on the creation of an information center for construction and building sector. The Information Center will link the Federation’s headquarters to its nine branches located nationwide and connecting it with the internet as well. Moreover, as a result of this agreement a new portal for the Federation will be created to support the building and construction sector in Egypt. MALI: FRANCE TELECOM WINS CELLULAR LICENCEFrance Telecom has been awarded a licence to work in the telecommunications sector. The company has a licence to establish a GSM mobile telephone network and international communications. France Telecom was chosen ahead of competitors after the tender was issued in September 2001. France Telecom’s arrival ended the GSM monopoly of Malitel. The government still intends to privatise Societe des telecommunications du Mali (Sotelma). (source: Business Africa via DigAfrica) SUDAN OPENS THE BIDDING FOR NEW MOBILE NETWORKSudan launched a tender last Tuesday for a second mobile network to operate in the African country alongside the Sudanese Telecommunications Company.In a Tuesday press conference, Sudan’s Information and Communications Minister Maghdi Ibrahim said operations for the new network will begin in early 2003. Sudan’s first mobile phone operator, Sudatel, began in 1999 and has established a mobile phone network that reaches 17 major cities in Sudan, including the capital Khartoum, serving 130,000 subscribers. Sudatel’s general manager, Abdel Aziz Othman, welcomed the latest tender, telling reporters that this would increase mobile phone subscriber numbers.Sudatel was privatized in 1993, but the government still holds the majority stake. (source: Associated Press via DigAfrica) 14 FIRMS BID TO MANAGE NITELFourteen telecommunication companies have applied for the job of managing the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) for the next three years on contract.The fourteen firms who met the June 28 deadline for expression of interest include thirteen foreign companies and a wholly owned Nigerian company, Peter Ettah Nigeria Joe Anichebe, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE)s Deputy Director, Public Affairs gave the names of the foreign firms as follows: Africa Access/Lucent (USA), AFL Telecom, China Netecom Consortium, Keppel T & T of Singapore, Last Mile Communications (USA), Pentascope of Netherlands, Premier Contracts Agency LLI, Saskfel International of Canada, Telenor Management Partner (TMP), Swedetel AB (Norway and Sweden), TCIL Bhawan and BNSL (India) and WFI. The search for a management contractor is the first step in a two-pronged approach to the privatization of NITEL which suffered dramatic reverse last March 27 when Investors International (London) Limited failed to pay the $1.137 billion it bidded for the 51 percent equity stake in the company. To revive the privatization process, the BPE resorted to appointing a management contractor for NITEL and putting its shares for sale in tranches at the Nigerian Stock Exchange.Anichebe disclosed last week that the selection process of the contract managers would be completed by the end of September, in time for the opening of the subscription list for the Initial Public Offer (IPO) of NITEL. (source: Media in Nigeria) SENEGAL NOW HAS 53 MEGABITS INTERNATIONAL BANDWIDTH CONNECTIONSince last month Senegal now has a 53 megabits per second international connection for internet use. This makes Senegal number three in the African bandwidth league after South Africa (400 mb/s) and Morocco (100 mb/s). Sonatel : http://www.sonatel.sn IN BRIEF- Digital Partnership has opened its firs E-Learning Resource Centre. It aims to equip South African schools with computers decommissioned by some of the world’s largest companies. South Africa was chosen as the pilot country as it has the necessary infrastructure and a recognition by government that its economic future is inextricably linked to technology. A local board will direct its work in SA, chaired by communications department director-general Andile Ngcaba with, Vodacom corporate affairs executive Joan Joffe as its deputy. - Mozambique’s state-owned telco, TDM, and the multinational telecoms company Siemens last week signed a contract for the supply and installation of new telephone exchanges in Maputo and its suburbs, and for the second telecommunications transit centre in the southern zone.The total value of the contract, to be implemented by mid- 2004, is 9.5 million US dollars. The capacity made available by the new exchanges is equivalent to an extra 59,000 phone lines in various Maputo neighbourhoods. - The Namibian Country Gateway has completed a domonstration of its web site pages. The Rwandan Country Gateway has finalised its Action Plan. - Benin’s OPT has published its internet tariffs and information about the .bj domain. For more information go to: http://www.opt.bj/tarifs.htm
MTN SALE OF ASSETS AND DEBT ŒNOT RELATED’MTN says it is not looking to outsource its cellular network to cover $214 million in offshore debt, although the debt is one of its top concerns. "The two matters are completely unrelated and we can’t imagine where the idea came from," says MTN corporate affairs group executive Yvonne Muthien, commenting on reports linking the possible sale of infrastructure to the offshore debt. MTN South Africa is exploring the possibility of outsourcing its existing network and paying for its use or selling some of its radio base stations and leasing them for services. Either option could see an immediate cash injection for the business, but the company says this is not the objective. "Our entire thrust, almost our number one goal, is to improve operational efficiencies," says Muthien. "In a market where average revenue per user is going down, the only way to maintain profitability is to examine cost-cutting." MTN says case studies elsewhere in the world have shown that it could save up to 20% of its annual network costs as a result of such a deal. However, the company stresses that it is simply testing the waters and is nowhere near reaching a formal decision on the move, much less issuing tenders. "Just because it worked in Europe and the US does not mean it will work here; the same conditions may not hold," Muthien says. She also confirms that addressing the unhedged debt of more than R2 billion carried by MTN parent company M-Cell is the most important issue facing the group, but says a network outsourcing deal will not solve the problem. Most of the R2 billion is due to costs incurred in setting up cellular network operations in Nigeria. "We can’t willy-nilly go and service offshore debt with MTN SA cash flow," she says. "It would be excellent if we could have liquidated some of the offshore debt that way." Yet she says such a scenario would make good business sense and that M-Cell continues to make representations to the Reserve Bank and the National Treasury to seek permission to move funds in excess of the R750 million annual investment allowance offshore. Should such a request be granted, the yields from an outsourcing deal could be ploughed into MTN Nigeria, in which MTN holds a 77% stake. M-Cell is to decide during August whether it will bid for a stake in the second national operator (SNO) which is to compete with Telkom from 2003. Analysts have remained dubious of the company’s ability to sustain investment in both its Nigerian operations and a local start-up fixed-line player, both of which will require massive capital funding in coming years. Muthien says the offshore debt definitely limits M-Cell’s investment capacity and that no decision had been made requiring operations to "yield funding" for the SNO. Analysts remain dubious that an outsourcing deal could work, with one saying today the model would be profitable only if Vodacom and Cell C also sold their networks to a third-party that could eliminate duplication. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za) IN BRIEF- Telkom Kenya plans to spend Sh12 billion in the next two years to modernise its telephone network.The company plans to digitalise the network by the end of 2005, managing director Augustine Cheserem said last week. The project would also involve the installation of an East African digital transmission and a KU Band satellite system in Nairobi. - The Managing Director of the Liberia Telecommunications Corporation, Charles Roberts, has acknowledged that the corporation owes the workers 14 months’ allowance, and has given assurance that the management was doing everything to settle the arrears. - The Ghanaian Government is not yet out of the woods with the sale of Ghana Telecom. According to Telenor’s Chief Press Spokesman Dag Melgaard:"Telenor has no intention in taking part in a possible transaction on an ownership level. The intention of the business plan (Telenor is providing) is to establish a realistic and common understanding of the development of Ghana Telecom over the next three years". Translated, Telenor is doing a piece of consultancy work but has no interest in owning the company. So who’s going to buy it?
CTO LAUNCHES ICT DEVELOPMENT AGENDA WEB SITEThe Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation has launched a new web site covering international discussions of ICT It currently includes:DOT Force : Final Report of Team 5: Global Policy Participation The implementation team of the Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force) dealing with Action Point 5, to strengthen universal participation in global Participation in International ICT Decision-Making. A report on this topic by the CTO and Panos can be downloaded at http://www.ictdevagenda.org AFRICAN INDIGENOUS SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMSDr Gloria Emeagwali, Professor of History and African Studies, Central Connecticut State University has updated her site presenting various perspectives on Africa’s indigenous knowledge systems from a wide range of scholars. It publishes brief extracts from scholarly works on the subject and focus on several areas including food processing, textile techniques and metallurgy. IN BRIEFNew on the Yellow pages of AfricanColours: Romeo Zamani Makhanya (South Africa), Chuka Machie (Nigeria), Tendai Nhavira (Zimbabwe), Benedict Bukenya, (Uganda) Dreamers (Cameroon) http://www.africancolours.com/?content/yellowpages.html
STUDY SAYS ORGANIZE SITES THE WAY USERS THINKWeb site designers and site users think differently, according to a study by Kansas State University in the United States. Test subjects were asked to browse through a Web site, and then draw a diagram of how the site was laid out. "We had people drawing web pages on their diagrams that didn’t even exist," says psychologist Keith Jones. "We argue that web designers need to focus on how users mentally organize the information that is displayed," he says. Users remember categories more than individual pages, so designers should organize information into categories users will recognize easily. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2041000/2041040.stm (Via TAD Consortium Newsletter) HACKERS TO CORPORATE AMERICA: YOU’RE LAZYLast week’s defacement of USAToday’s Web site offers important lessons for companies onthe Web. Hackers say most administrators fail to patch systems for known vulnerabilities. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=714680 TOSHIBA FIXES FLAWED NOTEBOOKS, AGAINLatest BIOS update addresses performance issues found in some Series 5005 Satellites. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=714683 YAHOO REEVALUATES ITS MAIL FILTERSYahoo has cleaned up filters used to protect users of its Web-based e-mail service from malicious scripts embedded in HTML-format messages, and in so doing has put an end to one of the strangest of Internet neologisms. http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=714684
* Metissacana’s Michel Mavros is down but but not out. He’s
ceased to be an ISP for Senegal but is now offering his expertise
to any taker across the continent. In particular it’s offering
online services through its web site and partnership with African
operators and states which want to extend information and communication
technology in their country, in particular to rural areas and
consultancy for international organisations. * Meanwhile, the former Managing Director and Chief Executive of First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Bernard Ojeifo Longe, sacked late June after being suspended for his alleged role in granting over $100 million to the IILL Consortium to acquire 51 percent equity shares of NITEL, has challenged his removal in court. Longe is asking for a compensation of N136.6 million and an order to prohibit the Board of Directors of the bank from implementing any decision it reached on June 13. * A Ugandan heart surgeon based in Australia, Dr. Aggrey Kiyingi, is to set up a sh10b fund to promote computer awareness in the country.Kiyingi, the founder of Dehezi International, a local computer and Internet service provider, last week said he is encouraged by Government waiver of taxes on computer imports and their accessories. "For me, this is a personal triumph. I feel vindicated," he told guests at a cock-tail party to launch the Central Broadcasting Services (CBS) radio’s new website.The website, www.cbsfmbuganda.com, is an interactive medium through which listeners can tune-in to the radio over the internet. It was designed and will be maintained by Dehezi International.Kiyingi, a heart consultant who has since also become a businessman, has for the last five years campaigned for the removal of taxes on computers and their accessories. * Voice and data convergence and internet protocol (IP) telephony are the future and organisations are looking at the technology, but the market take-up is slow, says Fred Maurus, divisional manager of Siemens Telecommunications. He says not more than about 2% of SA companies have IP telephony, although there has been a greater rollout of the technology in the UK, parts of Europe and the US, where the telecom markets are deregulated. * Sonny Fisher has resigned as CEO and director of JSE-listed Y3K, embarking on a new career as a software dealer.
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