17th MASEAN Mid-Term Meeting (Malaysia)

The 17th Medical Association of South East Asian Nations (MASEAN) Mid-Term meeting was held from 25 to 27 April 2017 at Parkroyal Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This year’s meeting was hosted by the Malaysian Medical Association and attended by delegates from 7 ASEAN medical associations: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Pre-meeting: MASEAN Group of Journals

Following the discussion on ‘Boosting the Collaboration of our Medical Journals’ held at the 17th MASEAN Conference and APAME meeting in 2016, the MASEAN Group of Journals held its first interim meeting on 25 April 2017. Representatives from 6 ASEAN medical associations attended: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. The mission of the MASEAN Group of Journals is to build capability and quality within the MASEAN Group of Journals through training, collaboration and development of its members. Collaborative efforts includes open access to journals and sharing of selected journal articles and abstracts on MASEAN website. Through this collaboration, we envisioned to be among the top International Medical Journals. We look forward to more collaborative efforts from the MASEAN Group of Journals within ASEAN.

Scientific Symposium: EHealth - The Way Forward

The theme for this year’s Scientific Symposium was “eHealth – The way forward’. Through the advancement of technology, the working process has changed over the years to allow better productivity and effectiveness, this goes the same for the healthcare industry. Information is easily accessed online, along with the growing usage of digital and social platforms, needs of patients have changed accordingly. As the healthcare industry move towards the digital age, there were common challenges involved which were discussed during the meeting; data protection and infrastructure capability in the less advanced countries. Through the presentations and discussions, the national medical associations get to learn from the experience of other countries and hopefully apply it back home in their country.

MASEAN Dinner

The 17th MASEAN Mid-term Meeting ended with a gala dinner held on 26 April 2017 at the Parkroyal Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysia’s Minister of Health, Datuk Seri Dr Subramaniam s/o. K. V. Sathasivam graced the event as a guest of honour. He expressed his delight in what MASEAN is doing and encouraged the national medical associations to keep up with the collaborative efforts.

Next MASEAN Meeting

We would like to thank the Malaysian Medical Association for hosting this event and we look forward to the next meeting – the 18th MASEAN Conference to be held in Vietnam in 2018.