Zuellig Pharma Digital & Data has launched a digital health exchange (DHEX) platform, where healthcare industry players would be able to share confidential data with adequate safeguards, to further innovation and the development of new products and services.
DHEX is the first use case under the Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) Sandbox initiative of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
PETs are meant to help businesses extract value from data without exposing the data itself. This protects personal data and commercially sensitive information.
Launched in July this year, IMDA’s PET Sandbox allows companies, who wish to experiment with PETs, to work with trusted PET solution providers to develop use cases and pilot PETs.
Zuellig Pharma’s CEO, John Graham, said DHEX, which is hosted on the Google Cloud, “not only creates a secure and compliant way for more players in the healthcare industry to spearhead innovation in their respective fields, but also drive solutions that make healthcare more accessible”.
First in Asia
Graham noted that, till now, there was no healthcare data exchange platform in Asia.
“Data partners are challenged with a lack of technological capabilities and data-compliant processes while data consumers are faced with varied tech maturity and development, and a lack of trust,” he said.
Zuellig Pharma’s Head of Data Analytics, Michael Andrew, said the PET framework helped to ensure that data remained confidential in trusted environments.
“This technology increases the options for business-to-business (B2B) data collaboration through flexible partnership models and enabling secured encrypted transfer and cross-border data flows – providing accessibility to curated datasets or aggregated insights to help users connect the dots,” Andrew said.
Zuellig Pharma’s Chief Digital and Data Officer, Daniel Laverick, added that many of the problems with data access in the healthcare industry were due to the presence of data silos and the lack of “quality healthcare data from data partners for data consumers”.
Laverick added that by leveraging PET, with compliance to data privacy and competition laws, the digital health exchange “aimed to democratise data by harnessing the value of data from data partners including healthcare providers and Zuellig Pharma itself”.
Across 13 markets
This, he said, would be across 13 markets in the region and would be through the use of advanced analytics “that would foster a secure collaborative ecosystem to deliver data-centric excellence”.
Welcoming Zuellig Pharma as the first industry partner to join IMDA’s PET Sandbox program, IMDA’s Chief Executive, Lew Chuen Hong, said through PETs, Zuellig Pharma and its clients would be able to tap on “external data sources to enhance their market strategy for new pharmaceutical products, at the same time protecting patient data”.
“This demonstrates how the technology can help businesses to innovate with data while ensuring data protection for consumers, both of which are essential to our burgeoning digital economy,” Lew added.
