-says AI, technology being used to boost service delivery

MINISTER of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, during the opening ceremony for the Cardiology and Endocrinology Symposium at the Pegasus Corporate Centre on Sunday, highlighted the massive transformation in the quality of healthcare that is available locally.

The symposium, which was sponsored by Chirosyn Canada Inc., a Guyanese-owned, Canadian pharmaceutical company marking its 15th anniversary in Guyana, is the first joint continued education conference of 2025 between the Guyana Medical Council and the Guyana Pharmacy Council.

It featured intriguing topics such as Cardiac Rehabilitation and Women’s Heart Health; Cardiovascular Health Management, and the role of genetic lipoprotein in cardiovascular outcomes; and the effects of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, among others.

In his remarks outlining efforts to modernise Guyana’s healthcare, he further noted that the application of artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to improve the quality of healthcare being delivered in Guyana.

This, he said, has already commenced at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation where AI systems are used to interpret X-rays. He added that the intention is to expand the use of these systems in imaging by utilising AI more.

Minister Anthony pointed out that, at present, they are working towards developing an oncology centre that would provide specialised care, along with specialised centres for the rehabilitation of stroke patients. Construction of both of these facilities is set to commence this year. He said that they believe the next wave of medicine development is going to be one where we have to pivot from the point in medicine where “one size fits all”, to moving into a direction where precision medicine will be implemented.

The minister further said: “The world is transitioning from one where we treat patients as this one size fits all thing to every individual now. We’ll have to understand what is happening with that individual and customise our treatment to suit that particular individual and that’s where the world is going.”

Alongside this, he said soon, a genetics biobank will be set up which will aid in the preservation of pathology samples and more, to be used for research to better our efforts here in Guyana.

He emphasised that research will be a very vital component in improving healthcare.

Additionally, the minister mentioned that one of the things that the government has been working on is to attract companies that can bring quality healthcare products to Guyana and establish their manufacturing base locally.

According to the minister, they have already drafted new legislation, laying the foundation for companies to manufacture here.

He expressed: “We believe that Guyana can be a good hub, not just for ourselves but to be able to manufacture things that can be sold across the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas, and we have seen models like this how it works.” He highlighted that one such country is Rwanda where after COVID-19, it successfully encouraged companies to go there and set up a manufacturing hub, with help from the European Union (EU).
Following in Rwanda’s footsteps, Guyana recently signed an agreement with the EU, which will ensure the development of a manufacturing hub here.

Minister Anthony pointed out that in the next wave of development in the healthcare sector, the government is aiming to ensure that aside from manufacturing pharmaceuticals, Guyana will be making vaccines.

He said that already, there is a private sector initiative looking into the manufacturing of vaccines for animals. This should mature in about a year’s time, he noted.

The minister later revealed that once Guyana has the capability to produce these vaccines, attention will be given to the creation of vaccines for humans.

He noted, “The system is improving, turnaround times are improving; we are getting better but we need more people to be trained, we need more people to specialise because the quality of what we’re doing is going to be far different from anything that we’ve done before.”

He affirmed that while we listen to the updates, we must also practise what is in those updates, lifting the quality of medicine that is provided to patients.

Chirosyn Canada Inc., was founded by Tarlika Persaud and Dr. Sreedhar Cheekoori in 2010, beginning as a distributor of prescription medicines. Subsequently, it expanded to pharmaceutical manufacturing. (Faith Greene)