Safeguarding the People of Ghana
KT Corp. announced on Nov. 18 that the telecom company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ghanian Ministry Health and Welfare in Accra, Ghana to build a system to prevent the spread of infectious diseases using big data.
The MOU is the first one signed between KT and a national health organization and the first to cooperate with West African countries where Ebola occurred. KT said that the MOU was quite meaningful in that it laid the foundation for safeguarding the people of Ghana and carrying out disease-fighting projects throughout Africa.
The infection prevention project will guide customers on the prevention of infectious diseases and establish and manage an infectious disease prevention system through which health authorities can monitor initial risk based on various data such as cell phone roaming data of visitors to areas hit by infectious diseases.
In 2015, after the onset of MERS in Korea, the infection prevention system started as a leading big data project of 2016 of Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency of Korea, and has been evaluated as an excellent case of public-private partnership.
KT is appealing to national and international organizations for cooperation by proposing the establishment of the Global Epidemic Prevention Platform (GEPP) at the World Economic Forum Annual Conference (Davos Forum) held in Switzerland in January.