Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing Universitas Gadjah Mada (FKKMK UGM) recently signed a letter of intent with Supertext, a Swedish startup company on Tuesday (6/3) for a collaboration to bridge the digital discrepancy in Indonesia. The signature was done by the Dean of FKKMK UGM, Professor Ova Emilia and the CEO of Supertext, Martin Jacobson, witnessed by H.E Johanna Brismar-Skoog the Ambassador of Sweden to Indonesia at FKKMK UGM. The background of this cooperation is that Indonesian citizens – especially who lives in the rural and border area– should have a better access of the developing information in society, regardless of infrastructure limitation. This endeavor is inline with governments’ priority to build the country from rural and border area.

The program coordinator, Anis Fuad explained that Center of Policy and Health Management FKKMK UGM chose to collaborate with Supertext due to the difference with other startup that creates chatting application. Having a collaboration with several telecommunication providers in Indonesia, Superchat created a messaging device which worked well in 4G and 2G as a solution for citizen in internet-less rural and border area. The users still could send and receive messages even if there was no internet access. Moreover, this device allow the users to use their old phone in form of SMS (short message service). Anis added “This service is potentially good for a place with limited internet access, such as in Papua or Asmat. It is also good for UGM since we have various activities in rural and border area, so the coordination between UGM and field team is maintained despite of limited infrastructure. (interpreted by Leo\pictures courtesy by Sohid)