QUEZON CITY, Philippines – The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia (SIL-Asia) co-sponsored the 2nd Big Data for Health Conference and Workshops 2018 organized by the University of the Philippines Manila, MIT Critical Data, Stanford University, and the Asia eHealth Information Network at the Institute of Biology, University of the Philippines Diliman last July 10-11, 2018. The event was also sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD), Asian Development Bank, Standards and Interoperability Lb –  Asia as well as industry partners like Pfizer Essential Health and Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc.

Attended by over 140 participants from the academe, government, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector, the two-day event aimed to promote a collaborative research environment by bringing together academics, policy makers, innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry to discuss strategies and approaches to making health data work for improving health service delivery and health systems by leveraging Big Data for health, health data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence in medicine.

The conference booklet and other resources are now available at www.healthdatacon.aehin.net.

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 (PRC 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).