Japan delivers $1M funding to enhance maternal, neonatal care in Cambodia

The Japanese government has remitted around $1.17 million to the United Nations Population Fund, the UN's sexual and reproductive health agency, to support Cambodia in ensuring its vulnerable sectors receive continuous access to maternal and neonatal care amid the pandemic.

Specifically, the funding will help strengthen health workers' capacity and enhance the provision of sexual reproductive maternal and newborn health services by introducing telemedicine and expanding online learning platforms.

It will also help improve the access to essential sexual reproductive and neonatal health services and information for young people and gender-based violence survivors through the use of digital platforms.

Moreover, it will fund life-saving equipment and ambulances to upgrade emergency obstetric and newborn care in the country's northeastern provinces.

The funding is part of the total $9 million financial support by the Japanese government for the emergency COVID-19 response of 13 countries across Asia and MENA regions.

"Ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services and information is imperative for protecting the lives, dignity and safety of women, newborns and young people, as well as promoting their well-being," Mikami Masahiro, Japan's ambassador to Cambodia, commented.

Diagnostics chain Aarthi Scans and Labs gets Synapsica's AI spine MRI tool

Aarthi Scans and Labs, one of the largest chains of multispecialty diagnostics centres in India, has tapped the AI radiology company Synapsica for its AI decision support tool for screening spine problems.

Under the partnership, Synapsica will deploy Spindle, its AI solution that automatically spots over 35 degenerative pathologies in spine MRI scans.

According to a press statement, Spindle can automatically identify key vertebral points and provide a detailed, standardised mensuration of various spinal elements. It can also quickly spot and report variations and pathologies to assist radiologists and clinicians in diagnosing diseases and quantifying the degree of spine degeneration.

"The pre-drafting of MRI spine radiology report by Synapsica's AI solution with several measurements and interpretations will save at least 70% of our radiologists’ time and avoid inter-observer variations," said Dr Arunkumar Govindarajan, director of Aarthi Scans and Labs.

"This will also help in serial follow-ups for certain parameters," he added.

Synapsica CEO and co-founder Meenakshi Singh hopes that "more radiology players in the country realise the importance of adopting AI and how it can help them provide high-quality reports that can make a huge difference to patient outcomes".

Philippines' Science dep't pursuing digital health partnership with Australia's RMIT 

The Philippines' Department of Science and Technology is currently in talks to formalise a partnership with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia to work on digital health initiatives.

According to government news, details of the partnership are yet to be finalised but the DOST hopes that it will lead to capacity-building programmes on digital health, such as scholarships and training.

Both parties, it was noted, may also pursue cooperation in developing a virtual healthcare system that uses AI for interpreting health data.

The DOST is securing STI partnerships in areas where there are limited individual and institutional capacities in the Philippines, particularly in digital health. 

Among areas for innovation, telemedicine has played a huge role in the country's healthcare delivery during the pandemic. "This innovation may also be expanded to provide healthcare services to more Filipinos in far-flung communities," DOST Undersecretary Rowena Guevara said in the news report.

13 more digital health platforms join ABDM

The National Health Authority has revealed that additional 13 digital health platforms have been integrated into the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission ecosystem in the past three months.

This brings the total technology integrations to 40 since the mission was launched last year in September. The ecosystem now consists of 16 government apps and 24 apps by private players.

Digital health platforms connected to ABDM allow their users to create their unique Ayushman Bharat health accounts, as well as share their health data with healthcare providers from their apps.

The ABDM integrations are done through the ABDM Sandbox, a digital space for experimentation where integration testing is done before a go-live. 

At present, 876 public and private sector players are connecting and validating their software solutions in the ABDM Sandbox.