AeHIN has co-presented this year’s M.D.igital Telehealth Convention with the theme “The Role of Medical Students in the Global Digital Health Strategy 2020-2025” last April 24-25, 2021.
The online conference, initiated by the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges Student Network (APMC-SN), served as a venue to discuss the role of medical students in the Global Digital Health Strategy 2020-2025. It was attended by 461 attendees.
AeHIN helped the students in pooling experts from the Asian and global regions to present updates on digital health.
On the first day of the conference, three panel sessions with experts from the Philippines was held to discuss eHealth platforms, electronic medical records, and teleconsultations in the country.
In the afternoon, experts from the World Health Organization talked about digital health, particularly the strategies, capacity building curriculum, interventions, and recommendations in strengthening health systems advocated by the WHO.
Dr. Boonchai Kijsanayotin, Chair of the Asia eHealth Information Network and a member of the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group, presented the AeHIN Regional Call to Action for Digital Health. One of the expected outputs of the conference is to publish a paper on how student networks will align their strategies with the regional and global strategy for digital health.
Saurav Bhattarai from GIZ Headquarters introduced openIMIS, an insurance management system. Dr. Azza Mohamed Badr, also an expert from the WHO, presented the WHO Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Strategic Implementation Plan for 2021-2025. Dr. Enrique Tayag from the Department of Health Philippines shared the Philippines’ Current State of Telehealth Policy Framework, and and Mr. Jai Ganesh Udayasankaran from the Governing Committee of AeHIN shared about the National Digital Health Mission in India and developments in telehealth in the country during the times of the ongoing Covid pandemic.
On the second day of the conference, the morning session focused more on the technical side of digital health. Mr. Liam McCoy from the Massey College of the University of Toronto and Dr. Leo Celi from Harvard Medical School talked about what medical students need to know about Artificial Intelligence.
Experts from the AeHIN community also participated in the session. Dr. Prapat Suriyaphol from Siriraj Hospital in Mahidol University and lead of the Standards and Interoperability Lab Thailand gave a presentation on standards and interoperability. Dr. Roshan from the University of Colombo talked about Health and Medical Informatics Human Resource Development in Sri Lanka.
Dr. Alvin Marcelo, Executive Director of the Asia eHealth Information Network, discussed the Open Health Information Exchange and this was followed by a panel with another set of experts from AeHIN, Dr. Fazilah Allaudin and Dr. Pamod Amarakoon, to talk about tools for the pandemic.
The final part of the program was spent with experts from the Philippines, sharing about teleconsultations and changes in the medical education curriculum.
The conference proceedings and MDigital Paper will also be shared once available.