BACKGROUND: eHealth in the Philippines is poised to take off but adoption of eHealth applications in the country's public health sector is limited in scale.

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the context and status of eHealth policy in the Philippines. The aim is to lay out the domains of policy issues that should be addressed for the successful implementation of eHealth in the Philippines.

METHODS: The themes and issues of policies on eHealth cited by Khoja, Durrani, Nayani and Fahim (2012) were used to describe and analyze the status of eHealth policy context in the Philippines. These are: (1) networked care, (2) interjurisdictional practice, (3) diffusion of eHealth/digital divide, (4) eHealth integration with existing systems, (5) response to new initiatives, (6) goal-setting for eHealth policy, (7) evaluation and research, (8) investment, and (9) ethics in eHealth. Documents and policies in the form of enacted laws, memoranda, implementing rules and regulations were retrieved and reviewed to answer whether or not policy themes and issues are addressed currently.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Current policies in the status quo do not adequately address the issues that enable effective implementation of eHealth in the Philippines. While preconditions for eHealth to flourish such as strategic frameworks for ICT and eHealth have been established, they are inadequate in addressing licensing, diffusion of innovation, handling innovation, evaluation and research, and investment.

Human ; Public Health ; Investments ; Digital Divide ; Goals ; Telemedicine ; Research ; Diffusion Of Innovation ; Public Sector

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Road safety in the Philippines has been increasingly significant with the increasing level of industrialization and urbanization over the last decade. The main objective of the study was to determine the road safety performance for Metro Manila by computing for an index based on data and variables of road traffic over the past years.

METHODOLOGY: The variables for index calculation included speed, alcohol, infrastructure, vehicle defect, and other unsafe driver behavior were drawn from the Metro Manila Development (MMDA) database complemented with literature review from several sources. Equal Weighting method was utilized, as this is the simplest, yet, least biased measurement suitable for the data at hand.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The Road Safety Performance Index for Metro Manila remains more or less constant over a five-year period, increasing and decreasing from 0.45 to 0.59 which means that Metropolitan Manila has fared poorly in all indicators. Metro Manila has a poor road safety performance as evidenced by the road safety index. There is a need to improve on all components of road safety identified in this study for the safety of road users. 

Industrial Development ; Urbanization ; Philippines