Thailand needs 3-pronged collaboration to overcome crisis, Telenor researcher advises
Apart from applying technology, a collaboration between government, academia and mobile operators is necessary to deal with pandemics, Dr Kenth Engø-Monsens, a research fellow with Telenor Group, said on Friday.
He was speaking at the “Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Learning from Managing Covid-19 in Thailand and Norway” webinar. The virtual forum was organised by the Thai embassy in Oslo, Thailand’s National Innovation Agency, Dtac and Norway’s Telenor Group in a bid to exchange knowledge on ways of dealing with the Covid-19 crisis.
During the webinar, Engø-Monsens said Norway has applied big-data technology to track potential Covid-19 patients. However, he said, the country respected people’s privacy and ensured that no personal information leaked out of the mobile operator’s data warehouse.
He also offered Thailand a three-step guideline on preparing for the next pandemic:
• Create collaboration between the government, academia and mobile operators
• Research, evaluate and test models in advance
• Create legal contracts, data specifications, a list of whom to contact, etc, before the net pandemic.
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Meanwhile, Telenor Group’s president and CEO Sigve Brekke said a partnership between the government as well as public and private sectors was essential to creating a digital revolution.
"I hope the collaboration between the government, private and public sectors will be advanced in a bid to boost the opportunity for a digital revolution," Brekke said.