HIS Challenges in Asia Prompted International Cooperation
August 4, 2012 3:37 am | by Aliyah Lou Evangelista | Posted in News
Bangkok, Thailand—eHealth experts in South and Southeast Asia are beginning to organize themselves for an Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN). The network, which aims to increase “learning and peer-to-peer assistance on Health Information Systems (HIS), Civil Registry and Vital Statistics (CRVS), and eHealth”, mainstreams a shared responsibility in resolving technical and institutional challenges on HIS. The World Health Organization-Western Pacific Regional Office (WHO-WPRO) leads the initiative as the National Telehealth Center serve as its Secretariat.
This August 7-10, 20 countries and 14 donor and funding agencies are coming together at the United Nations Regional Centre in Bangkok, Thailand for an AeHIN Workshop. In this event, country participants will share HIS problems and explore opportunities for international collaboration and partnership. Country participantswill journey on analyzing persisting problems on HIS in their region to come-up with a five-year work plan for AeHIN.
eHealth scientists in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam will share their experiences on implementing HIS in their countries. Much thought on highlighting challenges on:
- building capacity on eHealth, HIS, and CRVS;
- standards and systems implementation;
- information systems development;
- collaborative efforts for AeHIN;
- multi-stakeholder engagement; and
- enterprise architecture
will be presented to almost 80 HIS/eHealth, CRVS professionals, and representatives from respective Ministries of Health.
Core to the workshop is equipping participants on effective planning and prioritizing HIS actions. Participants will be oriented on the WHO-ITU eHealth Strategy Toolkit and the Collaborative Requirements Development Methodology (CRDM). This will support planning for most immediate HIS actions to be taken by the network through 2013.
AeHIN is an offshoot of the 2011 Asia Pacific Leadership Forum on HIS, held in Manila, Philippines. This forum, which led country participants to realize that multi-sectoral collaboration is central in strengthening HIS, is one of the main reasons that escalated support to AeHIN.
As early, December 2011, countries have started planning and meeting online to discuss HIS topics and issues which should be resolved in the region.
As interest in solving HIS challenges shoot up, so as the effort to turn these problems into opportunities of learning, sharing and strengthening HIS and eHealth intervention in Asia. Vist AeHIN website at http://aehin.org.dnnmax.com/.
