HCL Project to Connect India and Africa
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Jun 26, 2008

HCL Infosystems is implementing a network infrastructure project as part of the Pan Africa project. This project aims to connect 53 African countries into one network, providing electronic and knowledge connectivity to the African countries.

This network will benefit all the 53 African countries by providing Tele-Education, Tele-Medicine, Video-conferencing and VoIP services. Apart from this, the network will connect offices of all 53 heads of states of the African Continent where the communication would be through data, voice, and Video.

According to George Paul, executive vice president said, "This Pan-Africa e-network project is a significant step towards allowing this expertise of HCL and India to benefit African countries in their developmental efforts."

Facilitating education and knowledge sharing, the network will connect 7 universities from India with 5 universities from Africa. The African centers will further be linked to one centre in each of 53 countries within the continent. The network will also connect 17 super specialty hospitals from India with 5 comprising from Africa.

Addressing the recently concluded the World Economic Forum in Africa Ajai Chowdhry, chairman and CEO of HCL Infosystems said, "Having delivered and learned through the unique challenges that India poses as a country, HCL has built a legacy over 3 decades to enable the same for the African nations. I believe there is huge potential for increasing the pace of development in Africa by usage of IT by governments, institutions, including SMBs, and citizens."

In the tele-medicine space this project would connect super specialty hospitals giving them specialized medical advice and support to 53 remote patient locations, which will serve as specialized hubs to treat patients.

These remote hospitals will be fully equipped with the medical equipments such as ECG, X-Ray, and Ultra-Scan in each location. Tele-medicine hardware, camera, and software will help to manage, store, and forward the medical records of the patients. It will also analyze digitally signed prescription. The data centre will be deployed to manage and maintain the records for storage and backup, and retrieval mechanism for the medical facilities will be provided at the each super specialty hospital.

These 17 hospitals will have the capability to provide the Continuing Medical Education (CME), training to nurses, paramedical staff, and other health workers in the 53 remote locations using the network.

In addition to this 7 tele-education studios are expected to be set up with post-production setup. Teachers will be able interact with the selected students live and will be able to team up with them using the collaborative tools. 53 learning centers will act as a virtual class rooms for the remote centers. Expansion of the network to the other locations through adding more VSAT terminals as well as broadband, wireless connectivity will be possible by adding additional elements and bandwidth.


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