PASAY CITY, Metro Manila- Dr. Jaime Montoya, Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) Executive Director, led the 5^th Philippine eHealth Summit on 3 June 2016 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).

With the theme “eHealth Philippines: Big Data, Big on Privacy,” the Summit discussed concerns on privacy for health information exchange, big data, and healthcare analytics, in relation with the implementation of the Data Privacy Act of 2012.

DOH Usec. Lilibeth David and PCHRD Executive Director Jaime Montoya

On his welcome remarks, Dr. Montoya highlighted promising eHealth technologies such as the RxBox and eHATID. “PCHRD supported these technologies to reach out every Juan and Juana in the country-side,” he said.

The RxBox is a telehealth device allowing consultations even from geographically isolated and depressed areas of the country. “Field tested in 143 municipalities, the project is preparing for wider field testing to 1000 areas nationwide,” Dr. Montoya discussed.

Likewise, the eHealth Tablet for Informed Decision Making of LGUs (eHATID LGU), an android application that provides real time health information to local chief executives, is now in 365 municipalities nationwide.

New features of eHATID include eHATID LGU Morbidity Boards in Geospatial Graphs (eHaMBinGG) allowing real-time visualization and comparison of morbidity cases in the country and Protected Information Access (ePIrmA) ensuring users of public networks like the Internet to privately exchange data securely.

In 2013, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), through PCHRD, and Department of Health (DOH) also created the Joint DOH – DOST National Governance Steering Committee and Technical Working Group (TWG) to oversee the advancement of eHealth development and implementation in the country.

“Among the major initiatives of this partnership are the implementation of the Philippine eHealth Strategic Framework and Plan (PeHSFP), development of Philippine Health Information Exchange (PHIE), Privacy Guidelines, and finalization of draft of eHealth Bill.,” Dr. Montoya stated.