UOB Organizes a Forum to Discuss the Challenges of Digital Transformation in Light Of COVID-19

A number of professors and experts discussed “ways to overcome the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic through digital transformation”, at a Forum organized by the University of Bahrain (UOB) in cooperation with Prince of Songkla University (PSU) in the Kingdom of Thailand on Wednesday (8 July 2020), aiming to exchange visions, ideas, experiences and challenges facing all sectors in light of the pandemic at the global and local levels, and the importance of this transformation in the continuity of work and the provision of services with the required quality.

The Forum’s speakers believed that the current Covid-19 pandemic constituted an opportunity to test systems, procedures, policies, regulations and instructions related to the digital society, and produced a state of confidence in the ability of institutions in the private sector to facilitate their work remotely.

Moreover, they believed that the pandemic is a global challenge facing the application of the digital economy or the information economy, which requires educating people on it, providing a constantly developed infrastructure and advanced protection systems, indicating that accepting and overcoming these challenges is the only way to move forward.

Also, the speakers presented working papers on “the importance of managing and controlling the current situation in light of the pandemic, and its impact on local societies and economies of countries”, “how to protect companies and institutions from piracy and cyber-attacks in light of the pandemic”, and “organization and continuation of work through digital means”, in addition to presenting a digital device that helps discover infected people by measuring people’s temperature.

It is worth noting that there were five speakers in the Forum, namely: The Adviser to the Minister of Public Health and Professor in PSU Dr. Verkade, Head of the Department of Computer Science in PSU Dr. Jaina Bonk, and each of Dr. Rod Dilot, Dr. Enji from the College of Computing Systems And information at the University of Melbourne in Australia, as well as a spokesperson for Ciso Health Group in Singapore.

This Forum comes within the framework of an agreement UOB and PSU, which aims to strengthen individual contacts between scholars, students and employees in both universities, to strengthen links in teaching, research and cultural activities, provide opportunities for exchange between employees and students, develop and encourage joint research, seminars, conferences and workshops, and assist each other in obtaining external funding from external sources and developing joint study programs.

As UOB had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PSU in April of 2017 to enhance joint cooperation and work to increase the effectiveness of the Confucius Institute, which teaches the Chinese language at UOB.

It should be noted that PSU is a governmental university that was established in 1967 as the first university in southern Thailand, and it consists of five campuses, and includes 39 colleges and academic institutes, four hospitals, and more than 40 scientific research centers, and it offers 287 academic programs in various scientific degrees, with more than 40 thousand students.