Cambodia is redesigning how health data moves across its health system. What is changing, why it matters for vendors and private hospital groups, and how to prepare while the blueprint is still being drawn.
Cambodia's health information landscape is being redesigned. For many years, health data in the country has been spread across separate systems, built by different programmes, donors and providers, each with its own way of recording a patient, a test or a diagnosis. That is now changing. The Ministry of Health has a national strategy, a dedicated department, a blueprint in development and a clear intention to bring public and private systems closer together.
For technology vendors, this is a window. The architecture and standards are still being shaped, and the decisions made between now and 2030 will decide which systems connect easily and which struggle. This article sets out the seven shifts we believe matter most, and what to do about each of them. It is written for hospital information system (HIS), electronic medical record (EMR) and clinic management system vendors serving Cambodia, and for regional vendors considering the market. Private hospital groups will find a checklist of their own towards the end.
Figure 1. Cambodia's digital health milestones, 2023 to 2030.
The seven shifts fall into three layers. The first sets the direction, the second builds the national systems that data will flow into, and the third shapes the market and the rules everyone will work within.
Figure 2. Seven shifts across three layers.
Cambodia's National Digital Health Strategy 2024–2035 sets out seven strategic priorities, with the aim of streamlining more than 100 fragmented systems.1 It sits alongside the Health Strategic Plan 2025–2034 and the HealthTech Roadmap 2022, which together focus on telemedicine, interoperable systems and artificial intelligence (AI) tools in support of universal health coverage.2 Coordination sits with the Department of Digital Health, established within the Ministry of Health in 2023 to lead the sector's digital transformation.3
The important signal for vendors is that Cambodia is moving from many separate projects towards one direction. Systems that were acceptable as stand-alone tools will increasingly be judged on how well they fit the national picture.
The Ministry of Health, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), is developing a digital health enterprise architecture and a costed five-year action plan for 2026 to 2030.3, 4 WHO's technical support for this work calls for expertise in interoperability standards, particularly Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and in building foundational digital public infrastructure for health.4
An enterprise architecture describes how the pieces of a health system fit together: which registries exist, how patients and facilities are identified, and which standards are used for exchange. Once agreed, it becomes the reference point for procurement and integration, which is why the period before it is finalised matters so much.
In 2025, the Ministry of Health began moving its national health management information system (HMIS) to DHIS2 (District Health Information Software 2), joining more than 80 countries that use the platform.5 The new HMIS is expected to roll out to all public health facilities in the country.6
DHIS2 is largely used for aggregate reporting, so the quality of national indicators depends on the quality of the records underneath them. If facilities name diagnoses differently, count visits differently or rely on local codes, those differences flow straight into the national picture.
Financial protection in Cambodia rests on two main schemes: the Health Equity Fund (HEF), which reimburses public providers for care given to poorer households, and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), whose health insurance branch launched in 2016.7 At a European Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia (EuroCham) forum in May 2026, it was reported that full digitalisation of NSSF claims processing was expected by the end of May 2026, with private healthcare providers integrated into the system progressively.8 In July 2026, the International Labour Organization (ILO) sought support for a business process review of the NSSF health insurance schemes, focused on claims management, at the NSSF's request.9
Claims are often where data quality problems surface first. A claim that cannot be matched to a patient, a diagnosis that does not map, or a missing test result quickly becomes a rejected or delayed payment.
At the same EuroCham forum, Chhay Sothun, Deputy Director of the Department of Digital Health, stressed that a unified patient identity system is a foundational component of any integrated digital healthcare ecosystem.8
A national identity layer will help a great deal, but it will not clean up the records that already exist. Hospitals and clinics often hold the same patient several times over, with different spellings, transliterations of Khmer names, dates of birth and phone numbers. When systems connect, those duplicates travel with them. We explored a similar journey in Bangladesh's Health ID and Shared Health Record.
Private hospitals, clinics and pharmacies serve around 80% of Cambodia's health care market, with public hospitals and health centres serving the rest.10 Any connected national record will only be complete if private providers take part.
The rules for digital platforms are still taking shape. A EuroCham white paper has highlighted that digital health platforms are not yet clearly classified as healthcare facilities, information technology providers or e-commerce platforms, and has recommended a national coordination committee and a dedicated taskforce.2 Industry voices have also proposed a Cambodia Digital Health Alliance, modelled on the Credit Bureau Cambodia, so that private providers can cooperate on shared systems rather than running fragmented ones.8
In July 2025, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications released a draft Law on Personal Data Protection, Cambodia's first comprehensive privacy law, drawing much of its structure from Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).11 The draft treats health status as sensitive personal data, applies to foreign organisations that offer goods or services to people in Cambodia, and includes data protection impact assessments for high-risk processing and a right to data portability.11 The revised draft also removed a requirement to store all personal data inside Cambodia, allowing transfers abroad under defined conditions.12 As of mid-2026, the law had not yet been enacted, so its final form may change.13
All seven shifts share one dependency. A national architecture, DHIS2 reporting, digital claims, a unified patient identity and a right to portability all assume that records mean the same thing wherever they were created. At the start of any national programme, that is rarely the case.
In our work with clinical records across the region, we see the same realities again and again, and we expect Cambodia to be no different. Records arrive as scanned PDFs and photographs as often as structured data. Documents mix Khmer and English, and some older reports and clinical terminology draw on French. Laboratory results from different laboratories carry different test names, units and reference ranges. Medications appear under brand names, generic names and abbreviations. Imaging reports, clinical notes and discharge summaries are often free text. And many institutions maintain their own local code sets.
Figure 3. What separates digitised records from data-ready records.
None of this is a criticism. It is simply what happens when many systems grow up separately. But it is far easier to address while the national blueprint is being built than after millions of records have been exchanged. Digitisation projects tend to measure success by systems installed and facilities connected. Readiness is measured differently: by whether the data inside those systems can be shared, compared and trusted. We explore this idea further in When Health Data Becomes an Asset: What Readiness Actually Requires.
AI can do much of this work at scale, and we use it extensively ourselves. But in healthcare, speed without checks creates risk. Automated extraction and mapping need clinical review, clear audit trails and careful attention to where patient data is processed, as we argue in Healthcare AI Will Not Work Without Trusted Data Infrastructure.
It is the Ministry of Health's long-term plan for digital health from 2024 to 2035. It sets out seven strategic priorities and aims to streamline more than 100 fragmented systems into a more connected, standards-based ecosystem.
Established in 2023 within the Ministry of Health, it coordinates the health sector's digital transformation, including the National Digital Health Strategy and the development of a digital health enterprise architecture.
Yes. In 2025 the Ministry of Health began moving its national health management information system to DHIS2, and the new system is expected to roll out to all public health facilities.
A comprehensive draft Law on Personal Data Protection was released in July 2025. As of mid-2026 it had not been enacted. The draft treats health data as sensitive personal data and would apply to foreign organisations offering services to people in Cambodia.
As private providers are integrated into the National Social Security Fund's digital claims processing, they will need accurate patient identification and structured, consistent clinical data to submit claims smoothly and avoid delays.
Follow the national enterprise architecture work, add FHIR-based interfaces to the roadmap, strengthen patient matching, and make structured, standardised data the default output of their systems.
Cambodia's reset is a real opportunity for patients, clinicians and the vendors who serve them. Building data quality into the journey from the start will help make sure the connected system Cambodia is designing is not only connected, but trusted and useful. There are two ways we can support you.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Suhina Singh is a physician, the Founder and CEO of Jonda Health, and a health data strategist working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and clinical information systems.
