Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah Friday said that the world-renowned firm PAXERA had been engaged to install PACS and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies at JPMC, which were currently being used at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Harvard Medical Schools Mass General Hospital in the USA. This, he said while speaking at the 2nd Postgraduate Research Conference organised by JPMC at its Auditorium. The Chairman HEC Sindh Prof. Tariq Rafi, Vice Chancellors – Prof Nusrat Shah, AmjadSiraj, GulshanMemon, CEO AKUH DrFarhat Abbas, and Executive Director JPMC Prof ShahidRasool also spoke on the occasion.
The chief minister said this was not the JPMC inherited from the federal government. At the time of the devolution of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC), National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in 2011, their bed capacity was 2092 with a budget of Rs1.9 billion, he added. He said currently, we had increased their bed capacity to 4041 and the budget to Rs 25.75 billion and added that within the next three years, he aimed to further improve the bed capacity to 5000, which would make them the largest healthcare facility in Asia.
Murad Shah said that in 2011 the JPMC had 1185 beds, NICH 443 and NICVD 464. adding that his government enhanced the bed capacity from 2000 to 4000 in just 12 years. And In-sha-Allah within the next three to four years, we will raise it to 5000 beds which will make this the largest health care facility in Asia, he vowed. The chief minister said that his government was fully committed to health care. At the time of devolution, the Annual budget of these three institutes, JPMC, NICVD and NICH was Rs 1.9 billion and today it is Rs 25.75 billion.
Giving the breakdown of the budgets, Murad Shah said that in the year 2011, the JPMC had Rs 1300 million, NICH had Rs 218,416 million and NICVD- Rs 242,126 million budget and the total of the three facilities budget Rs.1,915 million. The chief minister said that in 2023-34 the JPMC had a budget of Rs 11000 million, NICH Rs 2066 million and NICVD Rs 15,674 million a total of Rs 25,740 million. We introduced cutting-edge technologies like CyberknifeTomotherapy and many others which are offered free of cost, he said, adding that patients from 167 cities in Pakistan and 15 countries had availed these free facilities.
Coming to the topic, the chief minister said that the Sindh government in collaboration with the Patients Aid Foundation, had engaged the world’s renowned company PAXERA to install PACS and Artificial intelligence at JPMC. The Sindh government will install the same system used at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Harvard Medical Schools Mass General Hospital, USA, he disclosed. Murad Shah said that JPMC would be the first public sector hospital to have Artificial Intelligence, which would not only improve patient care but also provide access to data for research and to develop its own protocols for different diseases. This will be the first time outside the USA that advanced AI technology will be deployed to make predictive algorithms based and trained on the local Pakistani population and disease patterns.
We also plan to give open access to these AI models to other institutes, especially in rural areas, where less experienced doctors can emulate the same level of accuracy as JPMC in disease diagnosis using AI, the chief minister said. Professor ShahidRasool, the Executive Director of JPMC, speaking on the occasion said that with the support of the Sindh government and Patients Aid Foundation, the JPM had emerged as one of the largest health facilities in the country. The Chairman HEC Sindh Prof. Tariq Rafi, Vice Chancellors – Prof Nusrat Shah, AmjadSiraj, GulshanMemon, CEO AKUH DrFarhat Abbas, also spoke on the occasion.
