PMAC 2020
Parallel Session 2.2
Smart Health Financing – Seizing Digital Opportunities
Saturday, 1st February 2020
Aye Aye Thwin, Christoph Kurowski, Fahdi Dkhimi, Marvin Plotz, Alok Kumar,
Boonchai Kijsanayotin, Monique Dolfing-Vogelenzang, Oliver Groene, Sonia Ancellin Panzani
Side Meeting
Opening Session
Plenary Session 0
Plenary Session 1
Parallel Session 1.2
Parallel Session 1.4
Plenary Session 2
Parallel Session 2.1
Parallel Session 2.2
Parallel Session 2.3
Parallel Session 2.5
Parallel Session 3.2
Digitization has opened various opportunities for the health sector to enhance its performance and accelerating growth towards UHC. There are opportunities for digital financing in improving real time data, analytics (AI and big data), and balancing patient engagement (e.g. feedback, verification). Some remarkable examples from each country such as in Thailand, standardize data collection to compare drug demand and pricing, in India, collect the biometrics data as part of patient’s profile and create a data network, enable a better referral system between hospitals, covering 500 million people, and in Burkina Faso, monitor drug cost and efficiency to reduce prescription, create e-platform for a better report system.
Instead, constantly getting more connected, there are some challenges in addressing the technological gap (data infrastructure, inoperability, privacy) and managing the adaptive “human factor” (fragmented data architecture, weak regulation, risk related to data privacy, need for substantial change management). It needs effort to regulate the digital opportunities in order to be more focus on data privacy, transparency, and how to collect and use the data more efficiently. To increase cross-platform interoperability, a generalized standard should be developed to integrate data from various databases. Leadership and vision of the government are also needed, as well as using data for decision-making and its role on issuing regulations. Need to invest in enhancing human readiness for digital transformation, particularly on people’s digital literacy, skills, capacity building, and etc.
