Berlin, Germany – The Global Digital Last Mile Health Lab (GDLMHL) at the Charité Center for Global Health, together with the Geneva Digital Health Hub (gdhub) and the Digital Transformations for Health Lab (DTH-Lab) in Geneva, held a side session to the World Health Summit, “Digital Health Unbound” Global Collaborations for Better Care” on 16 October 2024 at the Einstein Center Digital Future.
Recognizing the importance of cross-border and cross-sector collaboration in addressing global health challenges, the session speakers discussed how digital technologies can help transform healthcare delivery and access. In his keynote address, Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) Executive Director Jai Ganesh Udayasankaran shared the network’s experience in fostering global collaborations for better care, specifically in digital health planning and implementation. He stressed, “Health is the focus, and digital is the means.”
Udayasankaran also shared about efforts in the openIMIS regional hub Asia, a community convened and led by AeHIN to localize awareness-building and capacity-building in openIMIS. Recent efforts in the hub focused on moving from advocacy to supporting action-oriented activities by linking these with AeHIN’s larger role in guiding countries to implement digital health strategies. As an example, after the first digital health convergence workshop in Lao PDR, which resulted in the endorsement of the national digital health strategy, AeHIN, through the regional hub, collaborated with the Ministry of Health Lao PDR, World Health Organization Lao PDR, and several partners to explore the potential use of openIMIS in streamlining claims processing. Early this year, the hub conducted a technical feasibility assessment of openIMIS for community-based health insurance in Lao PDR, followed by partially customizing the software for demonstration purposes.
The openIMIS regional hub in Asia, hosted by AeHIN, is part of a project supported by GIZ and commissioned by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.