Narrowing Health Inequity Gaps through Telemedicine in Adapting to the New Normal
Directed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in collaboration with the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan
17th – 18th November 2022
For three years running, APEC Digital Health Policy Dialogues have provided a platform for representative from government, industry and academia from member economies to share their views/ best practices in promoting the application of digital health to support health services across APEC region. As more and more economies expressed their interests in digital health and are adopting digital health technologies to adapt to the new normal and apply telemedicine to address health inequity issues exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the Aotearoa New Zealand Interoperability Lab (ANZIL) Jorn Bettin (Partner, S23M) was invited to a panel on The Role of Interoperability in Health System’s Digital Transformation, and presented on the topic of:
Distributed – The Future of Data Governance
Collaboration, trustworthiness and reliability are amongst the biggest challenges in a digitally networked healthcare sector. Barriers to access, combined with poverty and educational failures create a wicked problem for equity in healthcare provision to marginalised groups.
Several healthcare challenges suggest that increased collaboration could improve outcomes, both for individual patients and for organisational efficiency/effectiveness. There is a tension between open standards and commercial information architectures designed to keep competitors out.
Simultaneously, the volume and variety of data relevant to healthcare is increasing. Monolithic data repositories seem increasingly impractical, particularly by comparison with a federated approach. However, such federation highlights the need for improved understanding of trust, in terms of both data use/ownership and data quality/validity.
Fast and efficient data sharing is not only essential for local healthcare but is important in terms of national and international public health surveillance.
AeHIN COIL at APAMI 2022 and the Digital Health Policy Dialogue
Consistent with the conclusion reached at the APEC Digital Health Policy Dialogue 2022, the AeHIN COIL representatives identified the imperative to establish a dedicated space to come together and solve their common problems.
Three initiatives proposed and supported by S23M address important pan-Asian digital health architecture challenges, as well as the need for a trustworthy space for knowledge sharing and knowledge co-creation, in alignment with the APEC Digital Health Policy Dialogue goals and the AeHIN goals:
- Document and formalize the healthcare service delivery landscape in each country, region, city, and local community (services, collaborations, staff, funding models, insurance/payment integration, etc.)
- Document and formalize local health data governance standards in line with local legislation (data custodianship & privacy legislation, indigenous data sovereignty, etc.)
- Identify and formalize reusable patterns (knowledge) between regions and communities (and between countries) relating to the International Patient Summary (IPS), health data governance, and healthcare delivery services.
Site Visit
National Taiwan University Hospital Telehealth Center
