Dr. Alvin Marcelo explains  FHIRlab, a cloud-based interoperability platform managed by the University of the Philippines Standards and Interoperability Lab (UPM SILab), with the support of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

The Association of Digital Health Malaysia hosted the 8th Digital Health Malaysia Conference from September 22 to 24, 2025, at MRANTI, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they invited the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) to participate.

Dr. Alvin Marcelo, a director at AeHIN and founder-convenor of the University of the Philippines Manila Standards and Interoperability Lab (UPM SILab), spoke about regulatory sandboxes at the 4th symposium of the conference, “Data Management and Interoperability in Digital Healthcare,” on September 23, 2025.

In his presentation, Dr. Marcelo discussed AeHIN’s regional role in convening, particularly the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL), in facilitating knowledge exchange on sandbox governance and the use of FHIRlab.net, a digital health interoperability sandbox for innovation and capacity building. He also delved into AeHIN’s role in sharing reusable artifacts, such as FHIR, SNOMED CT, and ICD-11 standards, as well as the Mind the GAPS, Fill the GAPS Framework, and the Learn-Build-Connect Framework.

Dr. Marcelo shared lessons from the region, which include sandboxes being stepping stones to formal regulation, the importance of multi-stakeholder governance, and scalability across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific, and emphasized AeHIN’s contribution to harmonization and knowledge sharing.

He concluded his talk by highlighting that sandboxes enable safe healthcare innovation and called on countries to collaborate by joining sandbox initiatives, sharing country experiences, and publishing, emphasizing that AeHIN can serve as a platform for their use.

Dr. Alvin Marcelo, standing in the rightmost corner, at the MOU signing between MHNEXUS and SMILE Digital Health. (Photo from MHNEXUS)

Before his speaking engagement, Dr. Marcelo also witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Dr Azrin Zubir of MHNEXUS and Duncan Weathersron of SMILE Digital Health to establish the SMILE Innovation Sandbox for Malaysia and Southeast Asia on September 22, 2025. Dr. Zubir, who is also the lead of the Standards and Interoperability Lab Malaysia (SIL-Malaysia), is in talks with Dr. Marcelo about further collaboration and learning among the COIL by sharing access to FHIRlab and Malaysia’s SMILE Server.

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