VIRTUAL – SIL-Asia’s Technical Director Philip Christian Zuniga presented about the ‘Growth of Interoperability Labs in the Asia-Pacific Region’ at the 6th Annual Asia Healthcare Week on September 2, 2020. This presentation showed how government-led digital health initiatives, such as setting-up interoperability labs can help countries attain interoperability in digital health and universal healthcare. As a reference regional health interoperability lab, SIL-Asia provides a template for the formation of national health interoperability labs, which can then support the adoption of standards. Conformance to standards will allow health information systems to easily exchange data for high-quality and evidence-based health services.

Aside from the presentation, Prof. Zuniga also represented SIL-Asia at the ASEAN Healthcare Leaders’ Roundtable with the theme, ‘Walking the Tech Talk: Policies to Accelerate Digital Health Adoption Across ASEAN.’ The panel session covered these topics:

• Opportunities and challenges in Southeast Asia’s current healthcare landscape
• COVID-19 revealing need for a globally-connected supply chain system
• State of standards harmonisation & data interoperability in APAC
• Role of governments and private sector in healthcare digital transformation
• Summing up what else is needed to close the digital divide in healthcare

In the panel session, Prof. Zuniga highlighted the importance of interoperability, cross-country data exchange, and a whole-of-government approach to support digital health adoption in the region.

SIL-Asia is also one of the supporting associations of the recently conducted virtual event.

To learn more about HL7-FHIR initiatives in the Asia Pacific, visit this blog on the ‘Growth of Interoperability Labs in the Asia Pacific Region.’

The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia is a regional health interoperability laboratory powered by the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with sponsorship from the People’s Republic of China Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund.

The concept for the Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia was first conceived at the Regional Interoperability Workshop organized by AeHIN in Manila last August 2015 at the sidelines of the Global Health Research Forum. The regional lab was designed to serve as a template of labs in each country that will later form into the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL).