Excellencies,
Participants, Policymakers, Partners and Colleagues,
It is both an honor and a privilege to address this Summit to launch what we hope will become a defining regional platform for digital transformation in health.
We meet at a pivotal moment. Across South-East Asia, our health systems face a profound paradox.
On one hand, we have the potential of extraordinary innovation. On the other, we have the current constraints of fragmentation, data silos, and technology lock-in.
These technical issues are in fact systemic barriers to equity, efficiency, and resilience. They slow our progress toward Universal Health Coverage, the International Health Regulations, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The WHO Global Strategy on Digital Health (2020–2027) calls on countries to develop strategies grounded in interoperability, inclusivity, and trust.
I am pleased to note that our Region has responded to this call:
Four of our Member States have already adopted national digital health blueprints.
Four others are in the process of endorsement.
Several are advancing AI governance and digital public infrastructure.
This progress is encouraging, but it is only a beginning. The challenge remains of turning these strategies into scalable, people-centered ecosystems.
This Summit is our response to this challenge.
It builds on the momentum from the inaugural global Open Digital Health Summit in Nairobi last year, which launched a global movement around the full-STAC framework — open Standards, Technologies, Architectures, and Content and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
The summit is also a manifestation of the 4th pillar of our Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience, which calls on us to ‘realize access to technology and innovations.’
Today, we bring these global and regional commitments together into one coherent platform for action.
It is our hope that we use this platform not just to talk about digital health, but to build a space where policy meets practice, where developers, architects, and health leaders come together to co-create solutions that can transform health systems.
Over the next three days, our mission is clear — to build capacity and foster collaboration
For capacity enhancement, we have hands-on workshops to equip participants to design interoperable systems that allow health information to follow a person securely throughout their life course, supporting continuity of care, empowering health workers, and enabling informed decision-making.
To foster collaboration, the summit is intentionally designed to bridge the divide between health and ICT sectors. Sustainable digital transformation cannot happen in silos, and we encourage the co-leadership of Ministries of Health and Information Technology toward a unified vision of national and regional digital public infrastructure.
We will also explore emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, with a focus on responsibility, ethics, and equity. This aligns with our WHO South-East Asia Regional Office’s ongoing collaboration on Responsible AI for Health and the AI Impact Summit.
I trust that we will use our time at this summit to move beyond from words to actions, leaving us with tangible outcomes:
Enhanced technical capacity to design and deploy interoperable health systems
Foster regional collaboration and learning among member states
A regional resource toolkit of FHIR profiles and use cases.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our broader goal is to embed trust, transparency, and interoperability at the core of every digital health investment.
In doing so, we can ensure that digital health truly strengthens systems and serves people—and accelerates our progress toward Universal Health Coverage.
As we move forward, let us commit to building systems that are open by design, interoperable by default, and trusted by the people they serve.
Let us ensure that no country, no community, and no person is left behind in this digital future.
Before I close, I would like to thank the Government of India, particularly the National e-Governance Division and the National Health Authority, our partners at UNICEF and our colleagues at WHO Country Offices. Your combined efforts to organize this event is a manifestation of the partnership and collaboration we hope to stimulate in digital health.
My appreciation also to the Government of India for its ‘Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission’ — an example to our region, and indeed to the world, of what can be achieved through open standards and digital public infrastructure at scale.
On that note, I wish you all a fruitful, productive and successful Regional Open Digital Health Summit.
Thank you.