Govt reaches out to IT majors to for COVID-19 management assistance

The government on Thursday engaged with leading IT companies like Microsoft, WIPRO and SAP for coming up technologies to roll out training modules for health workers and ventilator operators for containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Empowered Committee for COVID-19 headed by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant also reached out to NGOs for management assistance for the pandemic.

During a virtual interaction with representatives of industry, which included Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh, Wipro chairman Rishad Premji, Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari, Sindhu Gangadharan, MD of SAP Labs India and Rahul Sharma, president, Amazon Internet Services, Kant stressed on the importance of technology in rolling out training modules for health workers and ventilator operators.

Kant heads the empowered group on coordinating with private sector NGOs and international organisations for the COVID-19 pandemic.

"#NITIAayog CEO @amitabhk87has reached out to all NGOs for #COVID19 management assistance, in conjunction with urging all State and District officials to harness the resources made available by these NGOs. The quality of this partnership will be key during these times," the Niti Aayog said in a tweet.

Also participating in the meeting Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India K VijayRaghavan said there is an increasing need to not only leverage smartphones but also feature phones in accelerating the process of contact tracing and identification of coronavirus infection hotspots in the country.

Briefing the empowered committee, Nasscom presidentDebjani Ghosh said that Nasscom has created a special task force which is focusing on utilising data and technology for COVID-19 management and has launched an online directory of all its actions.

AmazonInternet Services PresidentRahul Sharma offered the utilisation of their decision-making platform which leverages the usage of machine learning on open data, to the Empowered Committee led by Kant.

SVP&MD SAP Labs INDIA Sindhu Gangadharan said that SAP Indiahas been involved in augmenting healthcare systems, working with NGOs and UN agencies, launching a platform to connect suppliers, along with assisting the Government in building predictive models.

Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi pressed upon the importance of the civil society and called on leaders of CSOs and NGOs to come together and complement the Government-led COVID- mitigation efforts at the Centre, State and Local level.

The group headed by Kant is one of the 11 empowered groups of officers constituted by Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla for planning and ensuring implementation of COVID-19 response activities.