There were no surprises for ICT in the Western Cape's medium-term budget, as the provincial government focuses its spending on modernising ICT systems and improving service delivery.
While no ICT projects suffered declining budget allocations, none of the projects in the province received any additional allocations. The forecasted overall 2010 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework allocations increased by R5.8 million, but the R235 million allocated to ICT in the province, in June, would not be affected.
Low bandwidth and limited Internet access are curbing technology advances in healthcare which could drastically improve medical services delivery, according to Yashik Singh, lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's department of tele-health.
There have been several local advances in the field of ICT-related healthcare recently, including a tele-psychiatry service, mobile pathology lab with satellite links for data transfer, and an artificial intelligence algorithm that predicts which HIV drugs a patient is resistant to.
Low bandwidth and limited Internet access are curbing technology advances in healthcare which could drastically improve medical services delivery, according to Yashik Singh, lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's department of tele-health.
There have been several local advances in the field of ICT-related healthcare recently, including a tele-psychiatry service, mobile pathology lab with satellite links for data transfer, and an artificial intelligence algorithm that predicts which HIV drugs a patient is resistant to.
The Free State Health Department will spend over R3.5 million to roll out telemedicine solutions in the next financial year, in an effort to improve service delivery.
The department says it has made funding available for telemedicine units in five regional hospitals: the Bongani, Dihlabeng, Boitumelo, Mofumahadi Manapo Mopeli, Diamant and Jagersfontein hospitals.
The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) will miss the deadline for the final implementation of the first phase of its e-Cipro project.
According to Cipro CEO Keith Sendwe, the operation of the new workflow and document management system has been “slightly delayed” and will not be fully implemented this year.