Directorate of ICT

In the past twenty years, ICT has changed fundamentally both in the practice and education in medicine. Large hospitals are completely dependent on ICT systems to run - Accounts, Digitised Radiography, Laboratory Ordering, Processing and Reporting Systems, Electronic Patient Record Systems, etc. These are now integral parts of how hospitals function. Likewise there are considerable advances in the use of ICT in medical education. In very general terms the uses of ICTs in medical education are to link learners, instructors, specific course materials and/or information resources. Thus, an ICT directorate is a critical component of any medical centre and/or University of this magnitude. In its endeavour to bring improvement in ICT to its environment, the ICT Department recently conducted a situational analysis of the WBUCHS and BMC infrastructure, hardware and operating software with a view of proposing a way forward to enhance its infrastructure and operations. To this end it is proposed to implement several projects. These include:

»A high speed communication infrastructure by way of a Fibre Backbone to all its Campuses,
»Comprehensive Hospital Information System (HIS),
»e-Learning,
» An Automated Library System and
»Video Conferencing.

It is envisaged that this will assist the sister institutions to achieve their intended goals in applying ICT in their day to day operations; and possibly become a model to be emulated by similar institutions in Tanzania and beyond.