Cambio Healthcare Systems opens IT Research Lab at University of Colombo

The Board Members of the Cambio Healthcare Systems AB lead by the Chairman of the board Göran Persson visited University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) to ceremonially declare open the Cambio Research Lab of the UCSC recently. Cambio Healthcare Systems is one of the largest companies in Sweden in the field of healthcare administration systems and a leading player within the European market, with about 95,000 users in general and university hospitals, primary care clinics and specialist units.

Today Cambio has over 200 IT professionals in their state of the art development centre in Colombo. Responding to the UCSC’s need of a facility to provide an IT lab for its final year undergraduates, Cambio Healthcare Systems AB set up a fully equipped IT Lab, called the ‘Cambio Research Lab’ and formally handed over 40 state of the art PCs to the university.

Those present at the occasion included the Cambio Healthcare Systems board Chairman Göran Persson who is a former Prime Minister of Sweden (1996 – 2006), and other board members, CEO Tomas Mora-Morrison, CFO Niklas Berglund and Chief of Software Engineering Göran Skold. Also present was Dr. Sunil Jayantha Nawarathna, Secretary Ministry of Higher Education and Prof. Kshinika Hirimburegama, Chairperson, University Grant Commission, Director of Cambio Sri Lanka Sushena Ranatunga and Head of Cambio Sri Lanka operation Dharshana Jayawardena.

After the opening ceremony students of the UCSC presented two recent award winning research projects conducted at the university.

Chairman of the Cambio board Göran Persson stated that “Information Technology is an absolute critical success factor for the development of any nation. If you as a country do not embrace information technology and keep pace with its rapid innovations, then you will be out as a player in the world economy of today”. As such he expressed his confidence that the ‘Cambio Research Lab’ will also in some measure help the students of UCSC to reach the international standards required of the industry, which in turn will contribute to the growth of the IT industry in the country by providing both the quantity and quality required in IT human resource in Sri Lanka.

Cambio Healthcare Systems AB, CEO Tomas Mora-Morrison  pointed out, “After evaluating many countries, Cambio selected Sri Lanka as the place to house our Software Engineering division based on many factors such as availability of skilled IT staff, low staff turnover and cost of operations.”

Endorsing these thoughts, Ministry of Higher Education Secretary Dr. Sunil Jayantha Nawarathna said that Sri Lanka had plans on making the country an IT hub in the future. “There are many wonderful opportunities emerging in all parts of the world and Sri Lanka has a number of good IT companies with good products that can provide services to those markets.  Research labs of this nature are what create the stepping stone for our graduates to enhance their abilities to meet with the standards required to serve international market requirements.”  

Prof. Gihan Wikramanayake referring to many Swedish funded projects at the UCSC, thanked Cambio Healthcare Systems for setting up the lab to further strengthen research and stated that it was a great honour and privilege to receive a gift of this magnitude that would provide the final year undergraduates an opportunity to improve their skills and knowledge enabling them to have successful careers in the IT industry.

Commenting on this initiative, Cambio Sri Lanka Head Dharshana Jayawardena stated, “In Cambio, innovation is one of our key values and we recognise it as a vital need for the growth of the IT industry in our country. We therefore hope that this research lab will give the undergraduates the opportunity to demonstrate a high research potential and that they, the university and the country will immensely benefit from this state-of-the-art research environment.”