Monday 01 / July / 2024
Muscat: The Health Ministry’s project titled “Use of artificial intelligence in early detection of breast cancer” won the World Summit on Information Society Award 2020, category of “electronic applications in health field”. The prize will be handed over during the summit’s session in September this year.
The announcement was made during the Sultanate’s participation in the fifth week of the virtual forum of the World Summit on Information Society's Award 2020. The event was organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in cooperation with UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD. The forum runs from June 22 to September 11, 2020.
Eng. Azza bint Sulaiman Al Ismaili, Minister of Technology and Communications, took part in the senior administrators workshop titled “Applications and Services of Information and Communications Technology”.
The minister explained that the Sultanate espouses new innovative approaches in some services that focus on citizens and entrepreneurship sector. She pointed out that, in the beginning of this year, a 4IR centre (for the 4th Industrial Revolution) was set up with the purpose of establishing solid grounds for the development of modern techniques.
She added that, due to the current world circumstances imposed by coronavirus (Covid-19), a National Committee was recently formed under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications and Technology to rally support for all ICT projects, including artificial intelligence ventures, with the prime objective of backing government establishments in their fight against the pandemic.
Eng. Azza said that the National Committee joined hands with the Ministry of Health in developing a composite platform to the Ministry’s system of monitoring during the period of diagnosis, follow-up and tracing of medical cases of infected persons who undergo health quarantine by using artificial intelligence and tracking techniques.
In another session, titled “Establishing Confidence and Security In the Uses of ICT”, Dr. Salim bin Sultan Al Ruzaiqi, CEO of Information Technology Authority, pointed out that the Sultanate was endorsed by the ITU to manage and operate the Regional Cybersecurity Centre (RCC) in the Arab world in 2013.
Al Ruzaiqi explained that the RCC supports member states in addressing challenges through orientation and consultancy services when these countries are drafting national cybersecurity strategies. The centre helps in the establishment of national informatics security centres and organises conferences and training programmes for ICT emergency response teams to prepare them to tackle threats targeting their respective countries.
The RCC has so far organised 74 training programmes and workshops in 16 countries, benefiting more than 8,000 cybersecurity specialists.
It is worth noting that the World Summit on Information Society’s forum is fully convened online (via videoconferencing) and that its weekly agenda contains different topics and events attended by specialists and decision makers in the sector of ICT from around the world. Also, a virtual exhibition and a hackathon in ICT are organised on the sidelines of the forum.
