Taiwan's digital health diplomacy: Policy progress and insights from the conceptual nexus of international relations, technology &amp; health
Creators: name: Godinho, Myron A
Publisher: name: F1000 Research Limited
Year: 2024

description: Taiwan’s unique expertise and interest in technology, health systems, and international relations make it particularly well-suited to participate in ‘Digital Health Diplomacy’ (DHD). Digital Health Diplomacy has three identified dimensions:

 ‘Diplomacy for digital health’ (e.g., digital health stakeholders increasingly recruiting political structures and processes to support technical efforts Global Digital Health);
 ‘Digital health for diplomacy’ (e.g. diplomatic efforts towards regional integration are looking to digital health cooperation to facilitate global peace, security and societal progress); and,
 ‘Digital health in diplomacy’ (e.g., involvement of digital health stakeholders in informing foreign policy).

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Taiwan conducts DHD both at meetings of digital health experts (e.g. Asia eHealth Information Network, [AeHIN]), as well as diplomatic meetings hosted by prominent Regional Integration Organizations (RIOs) such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summits. While these are regional and multilateral, Taiwan also embeds DHD initiatives within bilateral public health agreements, such as its recent memoranda of understanding with Canada, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom.<br>
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Reports on these meetings compare well with our analysis of recent high-level regional diplomatic meetings from across global regions which discussed digital health. These included the Assembly of the African Union (intra-regional), the Pacific Health Minister’s Meeting (sub-regional), the ASEAN-EU dialogues (inter-regional), and the Group of 20 Summit (trans-regional). While all seven framework components of the WHO’s Global Strategy on Digital Health were addressed across the meetings, greater emphasis was placed on those which aligned with regional priorities, needs, and capabilities. Cross-cutting themes included ‘health security’, ‘enterprise architecture’, ‘digital public infrastructure’, and ‘public-private partnerships.’<br>
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By comparison, Taiwan plays an outsized leadership and agenda-setting role for DHD, arguably stemming from its advanced technical expertise in digital health (i.e., niche diplomacy). Moreover, while other global meetings lacked evidence of direct collaboration between digital health stakeholders and their diplomatic counterparts, Taiwan’s ‘co-location’ of the APAMI 2022 meeting with the APEC Digital Health Policy Dialogue 2022 in Taipei demonstrates how this strategy effectively facilitates the co-creation of international digital health policy, and cooperative technical outputs (e.g. from AeHIN’s Community of Interoperability Labs).<br>
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Taiwan is poised to play a greater role in DHD, both regionally and globally. In an increasingly deglobalizing and regionalizing world, ‘networked multilateralism’ is an emergent approach for guiding DHD. Strategic engagement of non-state actors (particularly multi-national technology companies), application of ‘smart power’, and considering the role of ‘digital health attachés’ could be strategic approaches to explore going forward.