Stanford University and NIIT Collaboration

NUST Institute of Information technology (NIIT) and Stanford University, USA are currently collaborating on Tele-healthcare initiative of Reuters Digital Vision Program (DVP). DVP is geared to bringing together people engaged in developing technology-based solutions to address humanitarian, educational, and sustainable development issues.

Mr. Atif Mumtaz is the proposer and initiater of Jaroka, Tele-healthcare for rural communities, one of the major ongoing DVP projects. Jaroka is a web-based tele-healthcare portal that enables clinicians operating in rural and disaster-affected communities to rapidly access expert advice and opinions from specialists around the world. NIIT has formed a dedicated team comprising its faculty members and young students to make this project a viable success. The project is progressing under the supervision of Dr. Arshad Ali (Director General NIIT). Actively associated with the project are Dr. Amir Shafi, Mr. Adnan Iqbal, Ms. Shamila Keyani, and a dedicated band of NIIT students. The project team is now working towards telemedicine initiative within the NIIT premises. Seminars on relevant topics are held every Wednesday and progress of the students is monitored on a regular basis. NIIT has been able to persuade Army Medical College (AMC) to institute their first medical collaboration with NIIT and Stanford.

NUST Institute of Information Technology is committed to putting forth a novel and stimulating research idea and an equally conducive research environment for its incubation and fruition. The main impetus behind this effort and commitment is the passion to pursue projects bearing on fulfillment of high-value social and national needs in the commercially competitive world of today. NIIT-Stanford collaboration is destined to greatly facilitate development of cutting edge technology in the field of Tele-health care.

Jaroka, Tele-healthcare participates in IDEAS Competition

Jaroka, Tele-healthcare project participated in the IDEAS competition at MIT. The IDEAS Competition encourages student teams to develop and implement projects that make a positive change in the world. The project was one of the few cross collaboration between Stanford University and MIT.

The competition gave us a unique insight of how other students were developing ideas to bring about social change in the developing world. It also brought us in contact with other fellow students with like minded ideas.

What is Jaroka?

Our mission is to develop and deploy an affordable, sustainable, easily replicative internet based Tele-medicine healthcare system through which patients in rural Pakistan are connected with doctors and specialists in the cities for diagnosis and treatment. This way we can reduce the untimely deaths, complications and increase prevention of pandemic diseases in rural areas.

Why Jaroka?

70% of Pakistanis get their health care needs through Lady Health Workers (LHW) rather than a doctor. LHW are local women, who are provided basic health care training by the government or United Nations, residing in villages. Each woman, on average, serves a community of 1000 citizens.

There are 5,000 BHUs in Pakistan that serve as the clinics for rural Pakistan. These centers may or may not have a full-time doctor and are usually staffed only by a pharmacist or a nurse. Nevertheless, these centers are the first level of contact with medical facilities beyond LHW.