March 6, 2026 – The Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) has been working closely with Transform Health since 2021 to promote and strengthen health data governance (HDG) in countries. This collaboration began with AeHIN involvement towards development and dissemination of the HDG Principles, further extended to facilitating in-country dialogues and regional consultation on the Model Law on HDG and support for the evolving global framework on HDG.
As part of the ongoing Asia regional engagement initiative with Transform Health, AeHIN has been working with three countries (Mongolia, Nepal, and Vietnam) to support legislative and regulatory landscape assessments, convene national workshops to validate key gaps and outline actionable recommendations, and support the development of national implementation roadmaps to strengthen health data governance (HDG) legislative framework.
The objective of the webinar was to share findings from the ongoing Asia Regional Engagement in the above-mentioned countries and to highlight lessons learned from their national HDG assessments.
In his opening remarks, Jai Ganesh Udayasankaran, the AeHIN Executive Director, highlighted the importance of HDG in enabling access to the right data, at the right time, and by the right people to support effective healthcare delivery. He also emphasized the need for national policies and regulations that enable innovation while safeguarding privacy, ensuring ethical data use, and promoting clarity, accountability, and interoperability across health systems.
This was followed by remarks from Mathilde Forslund, CEO of Transform Health, who highlighted the urgency of strengthening HDG amid rapid advancements in AI, the existing governance and accountability gaps, and the risks of inaction. She also shared key resources and tools developed by Transform Health to support countries in conducting national assessments and strengthening their HDG frameworks. In addition, she informed that HDG is now included in the World Health Assembly agenda (Agenda Item 12.10), reflecting growing global momentum and attention gained on this issue.
This was followed by presentations from Mongolia, Nepal, and Vietnam. The speakers shared key findings from their respective HDG legislative and regulatory landscape assessments, highlighting the current landscape, existing gaps, best practices, and recommendations to strengthen national frameworks.
Mongolia
Bayalagmaa Bayraa, Lawyer and Lecturer from the School of Law, National University of Mongolia, presented the findings from Mongolia’s legislative and regulatory landscape assessment. The assessment highlighted several good practices, including the establishment of a fundamental framework for regulating health data, the designation of an authorized body responsible for health data governance, and ongoing efforts to strengthen human resource capacity for data processing, collection, and use.
However, several gaps were identified, including the lack of a clear definition of health data misuse, the absence of specific regulations for vulnerable and marginalized populations, and limited transparency mechanisms for reporting cyberattacks and data incidents. Key recommendations include adopting transparent measures for cyberattack and incident reporting, as well as developing specific mechanisms for the exchange, collection, processing, and protection of health data, while taking into account the needs of vulnerable groups.
Nepal
Jhabindra Bhandari, Researcher, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, presented the findings from Nepal’s legislative and regulatory landscape assessment. Jhabindra highlighted several strengths in the country’s health data governance landscape, including constitutional provisions protecting the right to information, health, and privacy, as well as national health policies, strategies, and roadmaps that were developed to help monitoring of UHC and health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The Nepal e-Government Interoperability Framework introduced in 2010 has supported data sharing across sectors while maintaining efforts to uphold data integrity and patient-centered care.
The gaps identified include limited awareness among stakeholders on digital health governance policies and laws, challenges in effective implementation of existing regulations, and capacity constraints in the context of federal health systems and emerging technologies. Key recommendations include developing a comprehensive health data governance framework and implementation roadmap, strengthening institutional capacity at all levels, improving coordination and interoperability across systems, and investing in digital health governance and data literacy.
Vietnam
Kieu Quang Tuan from National Health Information Center, Ministry of Health, Vietnam highlighted several strengths in the country’s health data governance landscape. These include the development of sector-specific regulations such as the Health Data Management decree and Ministry of Health implementation plan, and personal data protection instruments that provide core concepts for purpose limitation, data minimisation, lawful processing, and consent. Vietnam has also adopted a “security-by-level” approach for information systems to guide classification, security controls, and compliance across government platforms. The national AI strategy and draft AI law signal the country’s intention to strengthen governance of emerging technologies relevant to the health sector.
The gaps identified include the lack of clearly defined and implementable mechanisms for community-level governance and collective consent, particularly for indigenous and minority populations and community datasets. Patients’ rights related to secondary use of health data, as well as rights and obligations concerning derived products such as algorithms, models, and risk scores, also remain under-specified. In addition, implementation capacity remains a challenge, including workforce skills, data quality processes, sustainable funding, and continuous compliance monitoring. Following that, Tuan shared the recommendations based on the assessment, that include adopting a National Health Data Governance framework supported by clear standard operating procedures (SOPs), workflows, and facility-level checklists; strengthening the National Interoperability and Data-Sharing Framework through mandatory standards, access tiers, and conformance testing; and establishing a Health AI assurance layer covering validation, cybersecurity, post-market monitoring, explainability, and bias control.
The sharing of findings from national assessments from Mongolia, Nepal and Vietnam was followed by an interactive Q&A with webinar participants, moderated by Teh Xin Rou, AeHIN Secretariat, where speakers addressed various questions from webinar participants including implementation challenges, level of authority involved in HDG, feedback mechanism and next steps for strengthening HDG.
The webinar concluded with closing remarks from Roland Dilipkumar Hensman from the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific, who noted that this marks only the beginning of an important journey in strengthening HDG. Dilipkumar Hensman appreciated the efforts from AeHIN and Transform Health and expressed support from WHO Western Pacific Regional Office. He thanked the speakers for sharing their experiences and highlighted the webinar as a valuable platform for cross-country learning and exchange.
