The Department of Health (DOH), academe, and private sector are pushing for digital solutions to "effectively manage coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases" and to improve the country's healthcare system.
Dr. Alethea De Guzman, Director of the DOH Epidemiology Bureau, said strong data governance will facilitate efficient management of COVID-19 cases and strengthen linkages between the national and local government units in managing the pandemic.
“Digital innovations and solutions minimize processing time of data, minimize errors, while the electronic medical records can provide data on vaccines, and the adverse events following immunization,” De Guzman said during the launch of the BluePrint.PH Data Newsroom Series titled: Data Governance: Innovations and Collaborations in Response to the Pandemic on Wednesday, June 9.
A unified data dashboard of the COVID-19 would provide health experts more time to interpret data and come up with timely and relevant analysis, De Guzman pressed.
Quality and affordable healthcare
Digital solutions and innovations would also lower the cost of business and medical operations of public and private hospitals, allowing them to provide efficient and affordable quality healthcare to patients, according to Manelle Cousart-Suyat, Industry Head for Healthcare of Globe Business.
Suyat added that digital solutions would lessen the work for healthcare workers who are still dealing with manual paper processes that result in outdated records, missing files, and unaccounted billings.
"These digital tools will ease patients’ and staffs’ hospital processing journey by lessening the forms to fill out using integrated suite, for keeping medical records updated and secured through the Hospital Information System and cybersecurity, and digital payment availability,” she noted.
Contact tracing and early diagnosis
Dr. Erwin Alampay, of the University of the Philippines-National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG) said open and big data analytics could provide real-time situation analysis, contact tracing, and early diagnosis for early containment.
“Open and big data analytics in responding to COVID-19 can help securing public trust in government through better transparency and improved communication, and counter misinformation,” Alampay said.
De Guzman assured that the Health department "ensures the credibility of data" and the digitalization of COVID-19 data would not compromise the rights of the public to data privacy.
“Whatever data we release every day, we stand by them, we don’t alter, we don’t manipulate," De Guzman said.
“Data transparency doesn’t mean we will reveal information on the identities of patients,” said De Guzman adding that, “these are people we are talking about, each number represents someone, a family, a friend, a loved one and we don’t want to reveal very personal and sensitive information.”