The Regional Open Digital Health Summit (RODHS) 2025 commenced in New Delhi on 19 November, bringing together senior government officials, health technology innovators, and international development organizations from across South-East Asia.

Organized by the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics & IT, the National Health Authority (NHA), WHO South-East Asia Regional Office, and UNICEF, the three-day summit includes participants from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, the Maldives, and other countries. The focus is on leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), open standards, and technologies like Generative AI to strengthen Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and regional health systems.

Speakers at the inaugural session emphasized collaboration, equity, and interoperability as pillars of sustainable digital health transformation. Shri Rajnish Kumar, COO, NeGD, highlighted the importance of joint governance between the Ministries of Health and Electronics & IT to ensure systems like ABDM, CoWIN, Aadhaar, and UPI remain secure and interoperable.

WHO SEARO’s Manoj Jhalani stressed building technical capacity in the region for deploying interoperable digital health platforms, while UNICEF’s Arjan de Wagt highlighted the importance of a community- and child-focused approach alongside technology adoption. Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO, NHA, showcased India’s scalable digital public goods such as Aadhaar, CoWIN, and ABDM as models for health infrastructure.

The summit included multiple sessions covering:

Open standards and full-stack digital infrastructure to scale health systems across the region.

Foundational DPIs like digital identity, payments, and health registries as the backbone of resilient systems.

FHIR adoption insights, highlighting governance, workforce, and regional collaboration for interoperable health data exchange.

Health sector DPI use cases, with perspectives from India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

Generative AI in health, demonstrating AI applications for diagnostics, clinical documentation, patient engagement, and early disease detection.

Live demonstrations by Ekacare, Google, NiramAI, Sunoh.AI, and IIT Delhi showcased scalable AI-driven innovations transforming healthcare delivery and diagnostics.

The first day highlighted South-East Asia’s commitment to digital health transformation, reinforcing the need for open standards, interoperability, digital equity, and scalable health infrastructure to advance UHC and build resilient, inclusive health systems.