KARACHI: Pakistan’s Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) and health and education tech platform EDUCAST on Wednesday launched a telemedicine initiative aimed at reviving the careers of out-of-practice Pakistani women doctors in a project funded by the Islamic Development Bank.
Originally launched in 2018, the eDoctor program was born out of a national need to reclaim licensed but inactive female doctors who had exited the medical field due to social, familial, or logistical barriers, resulting in estimated Rs. 35 billion losses to the public exchequer. As many as 35 percent of female medical doctors are unemployed in Pakistan, according to a Gallup Pakistan survey in 2023.
The first phase of the project successfully trained and reactivated over 1,500 female doctors across 27 countries through a self-paced, digitally-enabled certification program in partnership with Germany’s Lecturio and Standford University’s Digital Medic platform.
The second phase of the project, Doctor 2.0, launched this week will offer advanced online certification in clinical practice and telemedicine, hands-on clinical observation opportunities at partner clinics, access to Al-powered virtual clinics via smartphones and integration into national initiatives such as ElderCare, polio eradication, MCH support, and rural telehealth.
“This is more than a training program, this is a movement to empower Pakistani women doctors through technology, purpose and dignity,” said Prof. Dr. Jehan Ara Hassan, Acting Vice Chancellor of DUHS. “With Doctor 2.0, we’re giving them a toolkit to reclaim their profession and serve their people.”
She added that Doctor 2.0 was positioned to become a “global model” for female-led, Al-powered, digital health, with plans to export the model to conflict-affected and underserved countries through partnerships with humanitarian agencies.
“This program embodies what modern, resilient, and inclusive health care should look like,” EDUCAST CEO Abdullah Butt said. “We’re proud to be the digital backbone of this transformative initiative.”
Past work of the eDoctor project include managing over 500,000 patients through EDUCAST’s COVID home care program in Sindh during the coronavirus pandemic.
In Afghanistan, the program provided teleconsultation services across 20 Afghan provinces, enabling cancer care, maternal health, and urgent second opinions, while in Yemen, through partnerships with NGOs like INSAN, it offered digital support in areas with no access to on-ground health services.
The program was also used to mobilize tele-triage and digital support during emergencies such as floods in Pakistan and is the backbone of Pakistan’s first elderly home health care platform, BRIDGE, supporting hundreds of senior citizens remotely.
