Health Ministry Signs ICT Contract With C&W Jamaica

The Ministry of Health and Wellness today (October 28) signed a contract with C&W Jamaica Limited to manage the private network services for the public health system.

Through the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure project, more than 100 health facilities will benefit under the US$8.43-million initiative which aims to enhance the delivery of healthcare in the country.

The project falls under the Health Systems Strengthening Programme, which is a Government of Jamaica/Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) partnership.

The contract was signed by Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton and Vice President and General Manager, C&W Jamaica Limited, Stephen Price, during a ceremony at the Ministry’s New Kingston offices.

In his remarks, Dr. Tufton said the project will make a fundamental shift in the delivery of service to patients in the country.

“This ICT infrastructure project, as part of the Health System Strengthening Programme, is timely. The value of this project is US$8.43 million, and the project is intended to look at storage, hardware site, servers, backups, disaster recovery as well as network and workstation, cybersecurity and help-desk support,” the Minister said.

“It’s going to be locating and networking 105 health centres and/or hospitals…we are going in phases, but this is sufficiently significant to make a difference, to have an impact, to demonstrate a pivoting for the better, the policies and programmes that we have to implement,” he added.

The Minister noted that the “game-changing” buildout is expected to reduce the long waits at the country’s public health infrastructure. He said that it will also improve access to health information and will give the medical team greater access to the patient’s health records, in a bid to improve chronic disease management.

He added that 70 per cent of deaths in Jamaica are attributed to a lifestyle disease.

For his part, Mr. Price said under the agreement, his company will be implementing the underlying infrastructure that facilitates the platforms for telehealth services.

“This includes our multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network, local area network, wide area network, security solutions as well as end-user devices such as medical grade laptops, tablets, desktops and two data centres,” he noted.

“C&W Business Jamaica will deliver and install and manage this process over the next 36 months in partnership with e-Gov as we collaborate to transform our health sector,” Mr. Price added.

The Health Systems Strengthening Programme aims to boost the island’s capacity to address the scourge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and the challenges of communicable illnesses.