The Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc recently attended a launching ceremony of a remote medical examination and treatment platform and Bluezone app.
Bluezone is a Bluetooth low-energy solution that can be installed on smartphones.
According to a press release, the app is designed to support remote hospitals in medical examinations and treatment, including COVID-19.
The event was jointly organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The platform, developed by government-owned military group Viettel, can provide such services like remote medical consultation, remote surgery consultation, remote training, and remote tech transfers, among others.
The platform is expected to increase the medical examination and treatment capacity of remote hospitals and reduce patient overload at central hospitals, thus helping save billions of Vietnamese Dong each year.
With this platform, experienced doctors can provide thorough and direct consultations for the patients in far-flung hospitals across the nation.
The release stated that the app can help detect others within 2 meters and memorise them. If the app user tests positive for COVID-19 (known as F0), through the saved data, health authorities can identify the F1 in close contact with F0 and the system will alert the F1 users about the risk of infection.
Users will also be provided with instructions to contact the competent health authorities for assistance.
Addressing the event, the Prime Minister underlined the introduction of the platform at this time as it provides another tool for citizens to protect their health.
It is also an initial milestone toward the digital transformation of the health sector and a step forward to realising the goal of turning the country into a digital nation, the release claimed.
The Prime Minister tasked the MIC and the Government Office to promptly finalise and submit to the government a national digital transformation program for issuance in April this year, in order to accelerate digital transformation across social fields.
Last month, the Ministry of Health also launched a Telemedince Centre for the COVID-19 Outbreak Control amid fast spreading of the epidemic around the world.
The centre is responsible for managing resources and professional activities in support of health clinics in receiving, quarantining, diagnosing, and treating COVID-19 patients indirectly or online, even clinics in remote areas.
Through the support of information technology, experts and doctors can see patients and medical parameters, and conditions of patients from respiration to electrocardiogram so that they can make recommendations on mechanical ventilation and infusion for lower-level colleagues, the release added.
The centre will help handle the problem of understaffing if the outbreak spreads widely while reducing close contacts between medical staff and COVID-19 patients.
Internet access quality in Vietnam meets standards, according to figures released by the Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre (VNNIC) under MIC for the first time on 20 April.
The figures are from nearly 30,000 subscribers in 69 networks, mostly Viettel, VNPT, FPT, MobiFone, and CMC, three months after the launch of an internet speed test system at national internet exchanges.
The results show that the average fixed broadband download speed is 61.39 Mbps, 45% higher than that announced by foreign agencies.
On mobile networks, the average download speed hits 39.44 Mbps.
Of the three cable internet service providers, VNPT ranked first in terms of download and upload speed, followed by Viettel.