Wipro digital transformation

>>> Public Health Portal officially launched

>>> Health sector determined to boost digital transformation: minister

The official was speaking at the plenary session of the Vietnam Health Sector’s Digital Conversion Conference which took place in Hanoi on December 30.

According to the minister, despite having to fight the COVID-19 epidemic, the health sector has made solid efforts in digital transformation, initially recording encouraging results. Specifically, in the administrative field, 100% of administrative procedures in the sector have gone online at level 4 – the highest of Vietnam’s online public service system, while 100% of documents at the Ministry of Health are now being electronically processed with digital signatures applied, along with the continued reduction of paper records and administrative procedures in order to facilitate people and businesses.

Regarding the prevention of COVID-19, Long said that there are many lessons for successful epidemic prevention, one of which is to focus on promoting the application of IT, from which many software and applications have been born to serve in the fight against COVID-19. Vietnam was the first country in the world to apply electronic medical declarations to facilitate tracing and zoning work.

One of the most impressive activities is how the health sector has helped many people in different regions access quality medical services right in their residence, thanks to the deployment of a remote examination and treatment system. Within a short period of 45 days, the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with other related units, opened 1,000 remote medical service venues and by the end of this year, there were 1,500 established.

Long added that the system will connect all medical facilities across the country, as one of the top requirements of the Ministry of Health to improve the quality of medical examination and treatment on a spar amongst regions.

It is expected that by 2025, 100% of health facilities will participate in the remote medical examination and treatment system, including the private health system.

The participants press the launch button to open the three digital platforms serving digital conversion in the health sector. (Photo: suckhoedoisong.vn)

At the conference, the Vietnam Medical Network, the V20 Grassroots Medical Platform and the Electronic Health Record Platform were officially launched, the first an internal social network made by Vietnamese experts to help connect health workers across the nation in order to share their expertise.

V20 is a software for grassroots medical management that will come into use from January 2021, applied to nearly 12,000 clinics across the country to eliminate paperwork. With this software, departments of health can survey all the data of commune health stations in their localities, while the Ministry of Health can also refer to such data.

Meanwhile, the e-health record platform will help better manage health records of patients nationwide with nearly 98 million records getting updated regularly by health authorities. According to Minister Long, from July 2021, all outpatients will have to have electronic personal health records, and paper copies will be completely removed.

The deployment of 5G service is hoped to accelerate the building of e-government. (Photo: insidetelecom.com)

According to the BIDV Securities Company (BSC), the pandemic has sped up digital transformation and investment in technologies at many businesses, while facilitating the sustainable development of tech enterprises that have pioneered providing solutions, platforms, services, and products for digital transformation.

The rising move towards digital transformation is expected to help such firms as FPT and CMC benefit from software exports.

FPT’s growth remained in the double digits last year despite the pandemic, with turnover at 29.83 trillion VND (1.29 billion USD) and pre-tax profit 5.26 trillion VND, increases of 7.6 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively. Net profit rose 13.1 percent to 4.22 trillion VND.

Of note, digital transformation contributed 3.21 trillion VND to turnover, up 31 percent against 2019.

In the tech sphere in particular, its turnover was some 13.9 trillion VND, up 23 percent year-on-year. Customer numbers also grew nearly 19 percent, while the number of projects worth millions of US dollars rose nearly 29 percent.

BSC said it hopes domestic enterprises with “Made in Vietnam” products will be prioritised in the Government’s digital transformation project.

Tech bidding packages, it said, are expected to be stepped up this year thanks to public and annual investments in technologies.

Packages for 11 road routes will total 4 trillion VND, focusing on services such as smart transport, administration, management, and automated toll collection.

Fixed broadband and 5G services will also drive growth among businesses operating in the telecoms sector.

The Ministry of Information and Communications said the sector earned more than 130 trillion VND last year, up 0.3 percent against 2019.

Between 2016 and 2020, fixed broadband rose 15 percent each year while mobile broadband grew 22 percent.

As of January, Vietnam had more than 1 million km of cable spanning all villages, communes, and wards. Mobile phone services covered 99.81 percent of the national population, while 98 percent of the population had access to 3G and 4G services.

According to BSC, major telecoms providers like Viettel, Vinaphone, and MobiFone will expand 5G services nationwide after partially launching services in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

To promote 5G development, the ministry has proposed the Government issue a decree on radio frequency fee collections and the auction and transfer of the right to use radio frequencies.

The deployment of 5G service is hoped to accelerate the building of e-government while serving as a prerequisite for promoting telecoms infrastructure and helping businesses with digital transformation, BSC said.

Telecom firms posted strong growth last year despite COVID-19.

Specifically, Viettel’s total turnover exceeded 264 trillion VND, a year-on-year increase of 4.4 percent and representing 102.4 percent of the annual target.

Pre-tax profit was 39.8 trillion VND, up 4.1 percent and 103.9 percent of the annual target.

The group posted growth of 6.4 percent in the telecom sector; nearly double the global average.

Its overseas investment also rose 24.4 percent, or six times higher than the global average, earning it nearly 42 trillion VND.

The Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) also recorded positive growth, with total turnover hitting 162.7 trillion VND./.VNA

The events were selected from the following areas: policies and mechanisms, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, applied research, international integration, and prominent scientists.

This is the 15th year of the vote for the top 10 S&T events, attracting the participation of more than 60 journalists who cover the S&T sector from 25 press agencies. The nomination was assessed by prestigious managers and scientists.

Below is a list of notable S&T events in 2020:

1. Prime Minister approves Programme on national digital transformation

The Prime Minister on June 3 issued Decision No.749/QD-TTg approving the National Digital Transformation Programme by 2025, with an orientation toward 2030.

The approved program has the dual goal of developing a digital government, economy and society while establishing Vietnamese digital technology enterprises that have the potential to go global.

The digital transformation in Vietnam has seen more strong developments than ever, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has had such a strong impact on the socio-economic situation, trade, education, culture, administration and transport.

2. Successful research on SARS-CoV-2 virus

* Successfully cultivating and isolating SARS-CoV-2 virus

The National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology announced on February 2 that it had successfully cultivated and isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the laboratory, enabling quicker tests for the virus.

With the achievement, Vietnam was then able to test thousands of samples a day when necessary. This also served as a basis for the development of a vaccine against the virus.

* Researching and manufacturing quick test kits for the SARS-CoV-2 virus

The Ministry of Science and Technology declared on March 5 the success of a research on a test kit for SARS-CoV-2 virus, making Vietnam among very few countries in the world to have succeeded in the research at that time.

The real-time RT-PCR research was conducted by the Vietnam Military Medical University and the Viet A Corporation as directed by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The project’s success is important at a time when the COVID-19 epidemic remains a global threat. Results also confirmed Vietnamese scientists’ high levels of professional skill and the ministry’s determination to have effective epidemic prevention and control.

3. Successful development of technology for flight control and balloon retrieval in the stratosphere

This is project VT-CN.04/17-20 on ‘Research to Approach the Technology to Use Balloons in the Stratosphere, integrated with Information Transceivers, to Monitor, Give Direction, Rescue, and Calculate Physical Parameters in the Atmosphere’ was carried out under the National Science and Technology Program on Space Technology in the 2016-2020 period.

The project was directed by Associate Prof. Dr. Pham Hong Quang from the Center for Informatics and Computing.

The project uses an IoT network at an affordable cost level for deploying sea and forest rescue tasks, monitoring off-shore fishing boats, floods, landslides, and forest fire data.

4. Science ministry receives draft Vietnamese history

The Ministry of Science and Technology held a ceremony in Hanoi on November 12 to receive a draft of Vietnamese history after five years of its compilation.

The draft history comprises 25 volumes of general history and five volumes of event chronicles.

The project, funded by the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, was carried out by nearly 300 scientists from research institutes and universities, mostly in Hanoi, Thua Thien-Hue and Ho Chi Minh City.

5. Viettel makes first 5G call with locally produced equipment

Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh (left) and Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hùng make a call on January 17 with a Viettel-made 5G device (Photo courtesy of Viettel)

The Military Telecommunications Industry Group (Viettel) successfully conducted the first call using fifth generation (5G) technology in Vietnam on January 17 with Viettel’s gNodeB transceiver.

The gNodeB transceiver, made by Viettel, includes both software and hardware. The device was developed in six months, starting in June 2019.

In May 2019, the carrier used a foreign-made device to make a call via the 5G network. After 8 months, Viettel has helped Vietnam master 5G technology.

6. Locally-developed tracing app Bluezone launched

Bluezone, a locally-developed app that helps determine if a person has come in contact with a COVID-19 patient, was launched in Hanoi on April 18 by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and the Ministry of Health.

Developed by tech firm Bkav, the app uses Bluetooth Low Energy, a wireless personal area network technology, to link smartphones within a two-meter distance.

As of mid-November 2020, more than 23 million Vietnamese people had downloaded the app.

7. Completion of Hoan Kiem Lake’s embankment using advanced technology

On August 20, 2020, the Vietnam Science and Technology Joint Stock Company (Busadco) announced the completion of the 1,500-meter embankment around Hoan Kiem lake in Hanoi. It took 65 days to complete the project, and it was completed 2 months ahead of schedule.

Remarkably, this construction project applies non-metallic reinforcement technology, previously applied in the project on building technical infrastructure systems in rural areas to prevent natural disasters and climate change, which won the Ho Chi Minh Science-Technology Awards in 2016.

8. Vietnamese scientists become affiliates in important physics research published in Nature

For the first time, Vietnamese physicists have become affiliates of a breakthrough research project published in Nature – a prestigious global scientific journal.

The international experiment, named T2K and described in the article ‘Constraint on the Matter–antimatter Symmetry-violating Phase in Neutrino Oscillations’, was published in Nature on April 16, 2020.

It was carried out in Japan with a collaboration between around 600 physicists and engineers across more than 60 organisations from 12 countries worldwide.

Vietnam is the second country in Asia besides Japan to have neutrino research appear in the Nature Journal. This Neutrino group is working at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Education (IFIRSE) – a member of the International Center of Interdisciplinary Science Education (ICISE), located in Quy Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province.

9. Successful operation to separate conjoined twins

The twins, their parents and doctors pose for a photo on October 7, the day they are discharged from hospital (Photo: VNA)

Nearly 100 doctors and nurses from leading hospitals in Ho Chi Minh on July 15 successfully carried out an operation to separate twins born conjoined at the pelvis.

This success of the operation demonstrated the qualification of Vietnamese doctors and advanced development of the Vietnamese healthcare sector.

This is the second complicated operation to separate twins in Vietnam, following the first 32 years ago.

10. Assoc. Prof., Dr. Do Van Manh receives Asian Innovation Award 2020

The Hitachi Global Foundation on October 30 granted the 2020 Asian Innovation Award to Assoc. Prof., Dr. Do Van Manh from the Institute of Environmental Technology (under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology).

Dr. Manh is highly lauded for his research on the implementations of advanced biogas to exploit sludge from beer and sugar manufacturing plants to produce energy and organic fertiliser. The research contributes to environment protection and sustainable development in the Central Highlands and South Central regions.

Digital transformation is an indispensable way for businesses to grow

Pandemic boosts digital progress

The past year was a difficult and challenging one for the Vietnamese business community. The global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted supply and reduced demand, heavily undermining the Vietnamese economy dependent on export markets and major trade and investment partners.

With strenuous efforts in pandemic control and economic growth restoration by the government, ministries, sectors and businesses, Vietnam’s GDP grew almost three percent in 2020, making it one of the few countries in the world to record net positive GDP growth.

Phan Xuan Dung, Chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Science, Technology and Environment, said that despite the impressive GDP achievement compared to other countries, Vietnamese businesses need to double or triple their efforts, cooperation and connectivity if they are to recover and develop.

World Bank Lead Economist and Program Leader for Vietnam Dr. Jacques Morisset said Vietnam was likely to achieve a high growth rate thanks to its success in pandemic control, and while global trade declined seriously in 2020, Vietnam endeavored to export more than the rest of the world did. In the past, Vietnam was inefficient in digital transformation, but since the pandemic, two-thirds of companies in Vietnam have shifted to digital platforms, he said. Expressing his optimistic outlook for Vietnam’s economy, Morisset said that although the world economy is still unpredictable, Vietnam’s economy will certainly accelerate strongly, possibly growing more than six percent in 2021.

Vu Tien Loc, Chair of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said Vietnam still has huge room for development, making the six-percent growth target for 2021 feasible.

The processing and manufacturing industries achieved high growth in 2020

Easing business environment problems

According to Loc, Vietnam needs to further simplify administrative procedures, ease problems related to its investment environment and overlapping laws and policies if it is to create a new driving force for economic growth. Meanwhile, businesses need to continue upgrading their operations and consider sustainable development and digital transformation an inevitable path to improve their competitiveness and integrate into international economic communities, Loc said.

Do Van Ve, Chairman of the Thai Binh Province Business Association, said Vietnam achieved a growth of almost three percent in 2020 although it had to focus on pandemic control, including social distancing, for more than half a year, indicating that the country will likely reach a growth of more than six percent in 2021 if it does well in terms of macro and microeconomic development. Startup development is crucial for small businesses to grow and big ones to become larger, he said. Enterprises need to pay due heed to product/service quality, price, design, and distribution strategies, and take opportunities offered by new generation free trade agreements.

An appropriate ecosystem and a stable and transparent legal framework are vital for business development. Although it has improved its business environment, Vietnam has not yet achieved the set target of becoming one of the four ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries with the highest competitiveness indexes and the best business environment. Businesses expect that Vietnam will reach that target in 2021.

The National Assembly passed a resolution in November 2020 on the socioeconomic development plan for next year, with the majority of the delegates agreeing with the economic proposals and the goal of achieving GDP growth of about six percent in 2021.

To implement the plan, the National Assembly suggested that the government continue to effectively prevent and reduce damage from the Covid-19 pandemic and other diseases as well as raising awareness of pandemic prevention and control.

The government and concerned agencies will accelerate research and international cooperation in vaccine production and provide access to Covid-19 vaccines as soon as possible.

The National Assembly suggested that the government consistently and efficiently implement measures to promote export and strongly develop the domestic market to stimulate consumer demand, developing the domestic distribution system and trade promotion, and proactively exploiting opportunities offered by free trade agreements.

The government will concentrate resources to accelerate the formulation of national, regional and provincial plans for the 2021-2030 period and submit to authorities for approval according to the Planning Law, ensuring timely response to investment and development requirements.

The National Assembly adopted Resolution 124/2020/QH14 on socioeconomic development in 2021, setting out a number of key targets, including a per capita GDP of about US$3,700 per year, an average consumer price index (CPI) growth of about four percent, a proportion of total factor productivity (TFP) to growth of 45-47 percent, and a 4.8 percent growth of social labor productivity.

Nguyen Hanh

More importantly, unlike previous technologies most of which had to be imported, Vietnam has gradually mastered and is now capable of producing 5G equipment, a strategically important step in Vietnam’s development of information and communications technology.

Off to a good start

Viettel was the pioneer in announcing commercial 5G trials in late November with coverage in the Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh and Hai Ba Trung Districts of Hanoi, where owners of 5G-enabled devices can now use the service for free at a speed of up to 1.5 gigabits per second, far higher than 4G.

Later in mid-December, Vinaphone also announced its 5G coverage in some central districts in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City as well as two demonstration centres so that those without 5G devices can experience the new technological features.

Mobifone also quickly caught up by piloting commercial 5G services in Ho Chi Minh City.

According to some experts, mobile carriers’ rush to roll out 5G services at this time is merely competition between brands and does not precisely reflect what the domestic telecommunications market will look like in the future.

With 3G and 4G technologies, Vietnam was a latecomer, but with 5G, Vietnam is one of the frontrunners. Although the trials are just an initial step in the long process to widespread rollout, the carriers’ efforts have demonstrated the local communications sector’s capacity and readiness to provide the new technologies to the people.

With exceptionally fast speeds, extremely low latency and very high density (up to one million devices in one square kilometre), 5G is expected to revolutionise how society functions in the future, especially in the fields of advanced technology, healthcare, transport and education, laying the foundation for Vietnam to master and apply new technologies as well as succeed in its national digital transformation drive.

Taking on challenges to rise up

Vietnam is pioneering 5G, an opportunity to master new technologies and catch up with the development pace of the world. But its position as a trailblazer means Vietnam cannot learn from anyone else’s experience and will have to find its own path to development. 5G will bring with it tremendous opportunities in the future but there are already also quite a few challenges at present.

First of all, carriers face a risk that 5G-enabled devices have not yet been widely popular with consumers at the time of mass rollout and that 5G business models are as of yet not proven to be effective.

In addition, demand for this technology is not yet very high, making carriers find it hard to balance costs and benefits. However, experts state that if Vietnam wants to develop, it needs to see a radical change of mindset and it must dare to meet the challenges head on, otherwise Vietnam will always be a technologically backward country.

The history of Vietnam’s communications sector has shown that successes have followed the appropriate decisions to embrace new technologies. In the early years of the Doi Moi reform when 95% of the world was still using analogue communications, Vietnam took the bold step and adopted digital communications immediately, resulting in the country achieving remarkable progress in this sector.

Then in 1997, Vietnam once again showed its progressive mindset by agreeing to open the door to the internet, opening a new living space and digital space for each of its citizens, connecting Vietnam with the world and laying a significant foundation for Vietnam to enter into important agreements such as the bilateral trade agreement with the United States and accession to the World Trade Organisation, helping deepen the country’s international economic integration and speed up national development.

The launch of 2G technology in 1993, followed by 2.5G, 2.75G and then 3G and 4G, has brought mobile phones, a luxurious item during the 1990s, to 100% of the population at the lowest possible cost. But it should be acknowledged that when transitioning to 3G and 4G, Vietnam fell behind the rest due to a failure to update policies and the management mindset, a lag in technology and lack of new competitive factors.

The fourth industrial revolution is taking place at a rapid pace around the world and 5G is one of the key technologies in this revolution thanks to its high speeds and low latency, essential to many sectors. Therefore all countries should take advantage of this opportunity and Vietnam is also taking proactive steps to get on-board the 5G train.

Vietnam has certain advantages as it can produce many types of equipment and infrastructure necessary for 5G. The Ministry of Information and Communications has affirmed that mastering 5G equipment is strategically significant nationally and Vietnam is one of the few countries capable of doing so. From now on Vietnam will actively act as a pioneer alongside the rest of the world with regards to technology, helping further stimulate the communications sector, making an even greater contribution to the country’s socio-economic development.