Hyderabad, Apr 7 (IANS): Telangana's Industry and Information Technology K.T. Rama Rao on Wednesday said that the state government is utilising emerging technologies to boost health services in combating Covid-19.

Participating virtually in the Global Technology Government Summit organised by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the minister, speaking on the theme 'Saving lives with emerging technologies', highlighted the importance of emerging technologies in the health sector.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, stated that the Covid-19 pandemic showed inadequacies in the health infrastructure across the world, including in the first-world countries like the US and acros Europe.

Stressing emerging technologies will play a key role in combating the Covid-19 pandemic, he said Telangana is a front runner in emerging technologies, and was efficiently utilising them in the healthcare sector.

He mentioned that his government is already working on a pilot project using drone technology in coordination with the WEF.

Dwelling on the need for digitising the health profile of every citizen to combat pandemics such as Covid-19, KTR told the session that Telangana is constantly working on leveraging technology to come up with various citizen-centric services with a larger societal benefit.

He pointed out that the government has succeeded in taking education and health services to rural areas of the state by using various technologies during the pandemic.

He also noted that utilising technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality will help the government in serving the citizens more efficiently.

The summit saw participation by close to 45 delegates and tech heads from across the world. The delegates included Rwanda's IT Minister Paula Ingabire.