Ncell bags WITSA and ASOCIO awards for its health project

KATHMANDU: Ncell Axiata Limited has won two prestigious awards for its telemedicine and health informatics project implemented in association with Dhulikhel Hospital to serve remote and underserved communities. The company has been conferred with WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards 2021 and ASOCIO Awards 2021.

The awards were handed over to Ncell by Honourable Minister for Education, Science and Technology Devendra Paudel, coinciding the ‘B2B ICT Business Summit 2021’ organised by CAN Federation on Friday in Kathmandu. CAN Federation represents Nepal in the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) and the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO).

Winners of WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards 2021 were announced on November 13 in the awards event orgagnised in Bangladesh. Ncell had bagged the WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards – Merit Winner under the Innovative e-Health Solutions Award (Private Sector/NGO) category.

Likewise, Ncell was announced as the winner of ASOCIO’s HealthTech Award 2021 on November 12 on the second day of World Congress on Information and Technology-2021 (WCIT-2021) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Ncell is one of the 35 winners of the ASOCIO Awards 2021 coffered to various agencies and companies from 24 counties from the Asia Pacific.

“We had the honour of reviewing well over 100, well qualified, unique and remarkable award submissions,” said Jim Poisant, Secretary General of WITSA a consortium of associations from the information and communications technology industry around the world, in a video message in the event. “Under the category of innovative e-health solutions, Ncell Axiata Limited is winner. They are awarded for serving remote and underserved communities through quality health care services using cellular and digital technologies.”

As a part of its CSR, Ncell has collaborated with Dhulikhel Hospital to serve remote and underserved communities at their door steps through quality health care services, using technology and data-driven health care methods. This initiative has been implemented in four remotely based health centres of the hospital, enabling local people to seek consultation from expert doctors based in the hospital directly from their nearest health centres.

“We are truly honoured that our innovative initiative has received the prestigious recognition from WITSA and ASOCIO for our social initiatives at the community level where we operate,” said Andy Chong CEO of Ncell. “This initiative contributes towards saving lives, travel time to city hospitals and lowers cost significantly for locals/communities. It directly benefits more than 15,000 households of the catchment areas for treatments of communicable as well as non-communicable chronic diseases.”

Sharing his excitement about the project and recognition, Dr. Ramesh Makaju, Administrative Director of Dhulikhel Hospital said, “It is a great honour that our joint initiative with Ncell implemented to take healthcare service to the doorsteps of rural people using technology has received these international recognitions. We have a plan to expand this project to 20 or more health centres, making it easy for our rural population to seek healthcare service conveniently.”

The project has been implemented in four community outreach centres of the hospital: Manekharka (Sindhupalchowk), Dorpu (Solukhumbu), Thangsin (Nuwakot) and BoldeKavrepalchowk. It focuses in two areas—Telemedicine and Personalized Health Programme (PHP). Under the telemedicine component, the project delivers quality healthcare services from health centres by using connectivity and modern telemedicine kit. In PHP, a preventive programme, locals from catchment areas of these community health centres will get personalized health services wherein health workers will conduct regular monitoring of the health of local people for timely intervention at the local level.