Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal has now joined a grow­ing list of pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions pro­vid­ing free Wi-Fi ac­cess.

TTWiFi was of­fi­cial­ly launched at the hos­pi­tal last Wednes­day, al­low­ing staff, pa­tients, and vis­i­tors to “con­nect seam­less­ly” across mul­ti­ple high-traf­fic ar­eas.

In his re­marks, Chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Chris Seecher­an, said the ex­pan­sion is part of a na­tion­al ini­tia­tive to bring free, re­li­able con­nec­tiv­i­ty to a broad range of pub­lic spaces across the coun­try.

At the hos­pi­tal, he said, ac­cess would be avail­able to a broad cross-sec­tion of users, in­clud­ing the Lev­el 4 wait­ing area, the phar­ma­cy, the Lev­el 6 Res­pi­ra­to­ry Care Area, the Lev­el 8 wait­ing area, and the Ma­ter­nal and Child Health Pae­di­atrics De­part­ment. He ex­plained, “Pa­tients will now be able to ac­cess health in­for­ma­tion, re­view in­struc­tions, or man­age on­line ap­point­ments while they wait for care. Those at­tend­ing clin­ics can com­plete on­line forms, check test re­sults, or com­mu­ni­cate with fam­i­ly mem­bers dur­ing clin­ic ses­sions. Doc­tors, nurs­es, and oth­er med­ical staff can quick­ly ac­cess dig­i­tal re­sources, train­ing ma­te­ri­als, and clin­i­cal ref­er­ences that sup­port dai­ly op­er­a­tions. Med­ical stu­dents and in­terns can use this WiFi ser­vice for re­search or re­view­ing course ma­te­r­i­al. At the same time, vis­i­tors can stay con­nect­ed to work, fam­i­ly, and oth­er per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties while on the com­pound.”

This lat­est in­stal­la­tion has in­creased the num­ber of pub­lic lo­ca­tions with TTWiFi to 232, in­clud­ing 12 trans­porta­tion hubs, 23 li­braries, 81 schools, and 116 health in­sti­tu­tions.

In his re­marks, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health Rishad Seecher­an said de­pend­able in­ter­net ac­cess has emerged as a key fac­tor in shap­ing health out­comes in to­day’s world. While pa­tients re­ly on in­for­ma­tion from the in­ter­net about med­ical mat­ters, he cau­tioned them not to re­ly too heav­i­ly on med­ica­tion man­age­ment ad­vice. “We have too many patents that are Google doc­tors and re­search a lit­tle too much with re­gard to their man­age­ment,” he said. How­ev­er, he said this con­nec­tiv­i­ty will al­low med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to mon­i­tor ser­vices in re­al time, eval­u­ate per­for­mance, and sup­port ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

He added, “This is part of the trust we are cur­rent­ly do­ing at the Min­istry of Health, where we are build­ing out our IT ca­pa­bil­i­ties through­out all our re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, and a lot of in­vest­ment will be done in this re­gard over the next three years.” Be­yond health care, he said, TTWiFi will as­sist el­der­ly cit­i­zens, low-in­come fam­i­lies, stu­dents, and job seek­ers who may lack in­ter­net ac­cess at home.

San Fer­nan­do West MP and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said his min­istry is de­vel­op­ing an in­creased broad­band pres­ence in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. He not­ed that with the launch of their lap­top ini­tia­tive, they al­so have AI-de­vel­oped math­e­mat­ics and lan­guage books, along with avatars.