Stakeholders at the roundtable discussion organized by UPM SILab. Photo by UPM SILab.

Makati, Philippines–The University of the Philippines Manila Standards and Interoperability Lab (UPM SILab), a member of the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL), convened a roundtable discussion with the Department of Health (DOH) Philippines, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), and development partners for a midyear assessment following the Philippine Digital Health Summit on October 14, 2024, at Ascott, Makati.

The roundtable is part of the four-day digital workshop series organized by UPM SILab that brought together stakeholders from the government, private sector, and healthcare institutions with the aim of advancing digital health in the Philippines.

At the roundtable, DOH Undersecretary Dr. Emmie Liza Perez-Chiong presented the Philippine Digital Health Strategy, where the OpenHIE framework will serve as an interim interoperability framework to be used at the local and national level healthcare provider network. Dr. Perez-Chiong, who is committed to convening digital health governance steering committee meetings under her term, also requested key stakeholders to support the strategy.

PhilHealth Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Jovita Aragona shared the plans for the National Health Data Repository (NHDR) and the process of bringing together public and private stakeholders to synchronize current and upcoming efforts to see how everyone can put their work together, avoiding overlaps and leaving gaps in the healthcare system, while ensuring that investments to the DOH and PhilHealth are working rather than detracting.

Stakeholders in attendance also presented the work of their respective agencies. The presentations will be summarized and aligned with the OpenHIE framework to help DOH and PhilHealth get a view of who and which stakeholders to invite for specific areas like terminology, facility registry, and health workforce registry.

The activity of the day identified enablers and challenges in terms of policy and governance, infrastructure, community building, and workforce development to summarize all of them for ground sourcing.

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