With the development of the economics among the APEC economies, there are more and more travelers traveling around the Asian economies. Every year, there are more than several million of the people traveling from APEC economies to another. At the same time, the pandemic disease outbreaks become more and more often through the carries by traveling. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, Avian H5N1 influenza in 2005, the two outbreaks cause several hundreds of people died and huge amount of money loss in those economies. The APEC member spend s a very long time to re-build their economics.
To stop the outbreaks of the pandemic disease, we need to address the important of the health information exchange of the travelers to enhance the surveillance of the highly infectious diseases. Only the early detection of the highly infection disease, we can stop the disease outbreak to avoid the huge amount of people died and economics loss.
Besides, a well-discussed on the Ethical, legal and Social Issue (ELSI) will be a key factor to reduce the resistance concerning human right protection on exchanging health records.
With the holding of 2006 APEC Forum for Travelers' Electric Health Records and APEC Medical Informatics Standards Community, we can facilitate the building of Travelers' Electric Health Records Template (TET) to enhance the disease surveillance between APEC economies.
.jpg)
