16-Jan-15 Vietnam’s Ministry of Health has strengthened efforts to improve healthcare services by working on key issues, including IT, medical equipment management and transparency. The Ministry said IT is key to improving healthcare services and simplifying admin, especially in provincial and district hospitals, which are trailing behind. [image: Vietnam News / Duong Ngoc]

15-Jan-15 Two recently released studies predict that Indonesia’s government will be unable to achieve universal health coverage by 2019 as planned. There is a huge gap in access to healthcare between different regions. A lack of hospitals in underdeveloped regions has prevented people accessing healthcare, leading to low claim rates. [image: Moynier Liana]

14-Jan-15 Overall, the Chinese government created lots of space for the private sector in 2014, meaning demand remained strong and companies benefited. This trend is likely to continue in 2015, especially if initiatives such as online drug sales, foreign participation in health services, and more funding for doctors’ pay, CFDA and telemedicine, are continued. [image: Forbes]

13-Jan-15 Regulators in Mexico have expanded the list of medical devices and healthcare products that no longer require registration. The list of items largely consists of components and accessories for low-risk devices. Mexico’s medical device market is second only to Brazil’s in Latin America. [image: MED Device Online]

13-Jan-15 Hitachi has launched a solution in India which will help extract precisely designated information from electronic medical records (EMR). The company says it is combining human and machine intelligence to help solve some of the problems identified by India’s medical practitioners, cost-effectively. [image: Getty Images / Bloomberg Businessweek]