ACCESS Health Southeast Asia participated in two different events at the Singapore Week of Innovation Technology (SWITCH).
On October 25, Vigneswari A, ACCESS Health SE Asia Consultant, moderated a fireside chat with Lauren Liang from Swiss Re, on strengthening universal health coverage (UHC) through innovations in private insurance.
The speakers discussed the common challenges facing UHC including: growing healthcare expenditures, the rise in non-communicable diseases, and weak financial protection. The chat concluded by reiterating the importance of public-private partnerships to increase the uptake of private insurance in strengthening UHC.
On October 26, ACCESS Health Southeast Asia and AWS Institute organized a panel session on cloud adoption in public health. The session saw Simeen Mirza, Senior Consultant at ACCESS Health SE Asia, present findings from the report Overcoming Barriers to Cloud Adoption in Public Healthcare. This was followed by a discussion with Dr. Suhina Singh from Jonda Health, Farhana Nakhooda from Health Catalyst, Dr. Chet Yong from Amazon Web Services, Leong Kui Lim from Speedoc, and Pak Setiaji from Indonesia’s Digital Transformation Office.
The panelists reflected on how the Covid-19 pandemic sparked many countries to adopt cloud technology for greater efficiency. More governments and organizations in the region are increasingly investing in cloud and data analytics as they shift towards value-based care. Many common challenges plague cloud adoption in the region, however, such as the lack of digital infrastructure, privacy and security in handling sensitive patient data, and cloud skill gap. Moving forward, panelists agreed it is essential to keep abreast and update data governance regulation, training healthcare workers in cloud literacy, and building data architecture to support cloud usage.