- Presentation: Transforming Bangladesh’s Healthcare in the 4IR
- Presentation: Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Information Technology
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has touched almost all aspects of human life. With the rapid evolution of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics internet-of-things, and blockchain it is pertinent to study its impact on a developing economy like Bangladesh. This is expected to have an impact on the way people live, the way people work, the way people receive services and the way people think. While there is optimism about the 4IR as to how it will change the future of work (FoW), there are also apprehensions regarding the impact of the 4IR on the FoW.
As a matter of fact, how the FoW will be shaped due to the 4IR will depend on the preparedness of countries in terms of educating and skilling its human resources and providing access to technologies. While countries around the world, particularly the developed ones, are exploring the potential implications of the 4IR on the FoW, the issue has not received much attention in Bangladesh. Moreover, development challenges in an emerging economy like Bangladesh can be tackled to a large extent by making a transition from a factor driven to a productivity driven economy and also using technology in many sectors. Indeed, this transition can also create opportunities for these countries to improve their efficiency and productivity.
These observations emerged at a Dialogue organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in collaboration with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Bangladesh on Thursday, 11 November 2021. The dialogue was based on the research programme “The Future of Work in Bangladesh”. Under this programme, CPD has recently prepared two papers titled: “Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on the Information Technology (IT) Service Sector” and “Transforming Bangladesh’s Healthcare in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
The presentations at the dialogue were delivered by Ms Nadia Nawrin, Programme Associate, CPD, and Mr Syed Yusuf Saadat, Senior Research Associate, CPD, respectively.
In her presentation, Ms Nawrin mentioned that the IT service has embraced artificial intelligence (AI) more than any other sectors. In view of the recent growth and potential of IT services industry in Bangladesh, this paper examined the 4IR’s penetration and impact on the workforce in the country’s IT services sector. The study highlighted that technology is undoubtedly playing an important role in Bangladesh’s development. Organisations in the IT sector are focused on deploying advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Blockchain, cloud computing, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), big data, and machine learning (ML) as products of 4IR to enhance productivity and improve customer experience. In fact, 10,000 new employments in IT and tech-based industries were to be created in Bangladesh by 2020.
“However, technology disrupts the labour market in terms of displacing workers,” she said. The study discusses some of the challenges that Bangladesh IT sector faces at present. She particularly mentioned that the emerging automation and cutting-edge technology is deemed as a threat to its human counterpart, especially to the older workers in the IT sector of Bangladesh. Moreover, complications persist in the IT services industry in terms of the existing gap between the lack of skillsets among the professionals and the knowledge required to meet the industry’s objectives. Even the employers sometimes fail in taking necessary measures for re-skilling and upskilling the employees. Hence, a number of coordinated efforts from the employers, the employees and the government are essential to address the challenges in this sector. Enhancing the skillsets of the workforce is, therefore, vital in the preparation for the digital age. Also, necessary policy actions should be adopted for optimising the 4IR.
Next, the study titled “Transforming Bangladesh’s Healthcare in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” pointed out that that Bangladesh has achieved significant progress on indicators related to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, which calls on countries to guarantee that everyone enjoys good health and well-being. Nonetheless, Bangladesh’s healthcare system remains fundamentally vulnerable due to years of neglect. The study pointed out that budget allocation for health has been less than 1 per cent of GDP for the past 13 years indicating that health was never a priority sector. Increase in the total budget allocation for health in FY2021–22 followed a linear trend line, making the rise business-as-usual and nothing out of the ordinary. Out-of-pocket expenditure on health in Bangladesh is not only the highest in South Asia, but also increasing over time.
Hence, there is no time better than the present to leverage the technologies of the 4IR to improve health outcomes for all as the health services sector of Bangladesh is technologically lagging behind many other countries. The 4IR is expected to disrupt the existing health services system by increasing the speed of services, improving the ability to manage illnesses, and changing the role of patients as well as the relationship between patients and healthcare service providers. Therefore, in order to take full advantages of the revolution, health services in Bangladesh would require significant investments in technology from the government, private sector, and international development partners. Without such investment in the health services sector, the targets under SDG 3 cannot be achieved by 2030. The study underscored the need to identify areas where investments in technology can help improve the quality and increase the affordability of health services.
The study utilises nationally representative microdata of 1,600 health facilities and 5,400 healthcare service providers from the Bangladesh Health Facility Survey 2017 to estimate the impact of the use of technology and information services on health outcomes. The results from a propensity score matching model show that the number of live discharges per month was higher in health facilities where a computer, or an internet connection, or a dedicated statistician was available, compared to where these facilities were unavailable. In light of these findings, a blockchain-based electronic health records system for Bangladesh was proposed. Such a system would boost machine learning-driven preventive healthcare, and would serve as the basis for establishing home hospitals where patients would be able to remain at home and still obtain medical services from hospitals in their vicinity through a combination of location-based mobile applications and video conferencing.
Dr Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director, CPD, chaired the session. In her opening remarks, Dr Fahmida said, the technological revolution due to 4IR has impacted every aspect of our lives including the way we live and the way we work. The 4IR is expected to increase our efficiency in terms of work. However, there is a strong need to focus on relevant policies—in terms of access to, use of and preparedness for technology. Discussions on finance issues should also be included in the agenda. She mentioned that the objective of the dialogue is to highlight the bottlenecks and required measures needed to overcome those.
Panellist Dr Md Abdur Razzaque, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Dhaka said that there is ample scope to increase the quality of human life and to dramatically improve the current healthcare services situation in Bangladesh. Even through digital technologies, it is possible to monitor a number of services including patients’ conditions and timely consumption of medications in the hospitals. All we need to do is to utilise the blessings of the 4IR. And this needs enhanced skillsets and necessary investment in our education system, he emphasised. Indeed, there is an issue involving the apprehension regarding automation invading and replacing human labour force. This further accentuates the need for a skilled and manageable workforce to address the challenges of 4IR, he opined.
Professor Syed Akhter Hossain, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) felt that, in the entire process of education of enterprise and relevant agencies, what is missing is the proper knowledge on how to leverage the advantages of the 4IR. He also emphasised more collaborative and rigorous research like this.
Dr Shagufa Anwar, Former Director of Communication, United Hospital, opined that the pandemic posed on the health sector a need for radical transformation towards innovation from conventionality. She said, national and central platforms for independent and data-driven endeavours are necessary. She also recommended that embracing technology at the nascent level is required, and the students across all medical schools and training institutes need to be given customised and concentrated technological trainings to make them tech-savvy. Additionally, step-down facilities in medical services are essential. Initiatives for small to medium medical insurances—from the local or foreign agencies or from the government—can lead to the decrease of the out-of-pocket expenditures. She also shed light on the issue of gender inequality in the IT services sector in Bangladesh.
Mr M Manjur Mahmud, Director and COO, DataSoft Systems Bangladesh Limited, said that Bangladesh has already progressed a lot in terms of IT and e-healthcare services ranging across a number of aspects in recent times. He opined that. “4IR is already here, we just need to know as a nation how to embrace that”, he commented.
Dr Sejuti Rahman, Assistant Professor, Department of Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, University of Dhaka, shared experiences research on treatment of autism and physiotherapy, using technologies. In this connection, she re-asserted that the lack of availability of local data and information is one of the constraints on such type of research activities.
In light of the findings from the study conducted on health services, the scope for extensive research and development (R&D) activities are hugely expanding, said Dr Wasif Ali Khan, Scientist, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). He highlighted some challenging issues that covered—the lack of dataset, biotechnology diaspora, raising funds, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement of World Trade Organization (WTO), and so on.
Professor Md. Shazzad Hosain, Department of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering & Director, NSU Startups Next, North South University (NSU), discussed about issues concerning upskilling the faculties of the universities and training the workforce. Even though the government arranges trainings for the workforce, still the purpose is not getting served. Hence, it is imperative to address the actual loopholes. It is also important to bridge the missing connection between research and the industry while working on inter-disciplinary issues, he mentioned.
Dr Arif Mahmud, Deputy Director, Medical Services, EverCare Hospital, Dhaka, re-asserted the problem in terms of the uneven distribution of healthcare system in the country. He felt the need for more effective utilisation of AI in our health sector in order to achieve the goal of providing quality health service.
Dr Taufique Joarder, Vice-Chairperson, Public Health Foundation, Bangladesh, remarked that more emphasis should be put upon the following technical issues and challenges—(i) AI’s implications and impacts on the beneficiaries, (ii) future of the work and its implications on the service-providers across different sectors, (iii) analysis of the policy issues, (iv) ethical and regulatory dilemma, (v) dilemma regarding human interactions, etc.
Mr Shadhan Kumar Das, Programme Co-ordinator, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Bangladesh Office delivered the welcome remarks at the dialogue. He thanked CPD for this interesting research which can be helpful in reshaping development discourses of Bangladesh. He commented that the future of work has been shaped up by digitalisation. Digitalisation and automation have been welcomed in various industries to create more jobs, upgrade the quality of production, and reduce the production time as well. In fact, technology has already increased accessibility to healthcare as well as artificial intelligence, and that is the core context of the studies, he mentioned.
The event was attended by IT experts, researchers, healthcare professionals, policymakers, development practitioners, academics, business leaders, civil society representatives, international development partners, and journalists.