Government working to bring down cost of data – Bawumia

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has assured mobile phone and data users that government has begun broad consultations with industry players to work out modalities aimed at bringing the cost of data down as much as possible and to make spectrum more available to telecommunication companies in the country.

Addressing a public lecture as part of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana under the theme: “Pharmacy in a Digital World,” Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia noted that at the heart of the digital economy and the quest to digitize the country is the availability of reliable and affordable data to the populist.

“I had a meeting with [the CEO of MTN] Selorm, and our question was how do we bring down the cost of data and how to increase coverage because the whole roadmap towards digitization centres around some of these critical questions. It was very clear that in trying to bring down the cost of data, government would have to make spectrum a bit more easily available,” Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia said.

Turning his attention to the theme for the occasion, the Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, commended the founder of the mobile app known as MedRx, Pharmacist Hayford Brako, for coming up with the app that essentially aims at bringing pharmacy services, availability of specific drugs and the location of pharmacies to the doorstep of the application users regardless of their geographical location in Ghana.

“I am very impressed with what you are doing and I would like us to have a meeting and see how we can support you because I see a lot of potential to help ordinary people and I think we need to encourage people like this who have spent so much into developing such innovative products,” the Vice President said.

Pharmacist Benjamin Kwame Botwe, President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana in his opening remarks at the AGM called on the Pharmacy Council of Ghana to expedite processing action on applications by pharmacists for “Online Continuous Development Programmes” accreditation to enable them update their knowledge as often as possible.

He further stated that the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana is looking forward to establishing through a model pharmacy concept, one model pharmacy per district in Ghana (1MP1D).

The CEOs of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevor; MedRx, Hayford Brako; Nyaho Medical Centre, Dr. Elikem Tamakloe and the Head of Operations for Zipline, Daniel Marfo, in a panel discussion, proposed various ways technology can be used to improve the Pharmacist-Patient relationship and the Pharmacy business in general.