Digitalization has been transforming all walks of life in today societies. Healthcare sector, among others, has been undergoing a tremendendous change thanks to the application of digital technologies. Digital health, or E-health, encompasses a wide range of applications, from personal health tracking to remote monitoring and diagnosis of medical conditions. It also includes the use of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze health-related data and improve healthcare delivery. Digital health has the potential to enable governments to provide more efficient and effective care, increase patient engagement, and improve well beings of the people.
As E-health has a tremendous potentials to make public healthcare more efficient and effective, In Asia, countries like Singapore, Korea and Taiwan have set ambitious target for e-health transformation. In Europe, Germany has also introduced legal reforms to set the regulatory framework for e-health in recent years. While increasing number of countries are joining the e-health trends, certain challenges and obstacles remain, including the digital divides, the low willingness of the healthcare providers and the patients to adopt new technologies as well as data privacy concerns.
On 2 June 2023, Konrad Adenauer Foundation Political Dialogue Asia (KASPDA) held a one-day Expert Meeting Group under the title “E-Health Development in Asia”, . The event was opened by Christian Echle, Head of the Department Asia Pacific at KAS and Andreas Klein, Director of KASPDA, and followed with a series presentations and discussions. Scholars, practitioners, IT experts as well as policy advisors from across Asia and Germany were invited to join our meeting to provide an overview of their country's e-health landscape and government policies. The participants also shed light on the implementation challenges and shared some best practises of digital solutions in the e-health sectors from different countries.
This event aims to bridge the dialogue and deepen the discussion about the development of e-health sectors from the region and provide some food for thoughts for policymakers from Asia, Europe and beyond.
Moving forward, the KASPDA's annual journal "Panorma: Insights into Asian and European Affairs" will be focusing on e-health topics and now call for papers submission. For more details, please refer to the page here.
