Interview of the Week: Dr. Elias Engelking, Healthcare Committee Co-Chair in charge of e-Health
This week's interview, Senior Communications Officer Stew Post met with Dr. Elias Engelking, the new co-chair of the Healthcare Committee focused on e-health.
Over the course of a wide-ranging conversation at EuroCham offices, the pair discussed Dr. Engelking's path to the medical profession, the transformational potential of digital technologies in healthcare, and his goals this new position.
Stew: Your medical career spans multiple continents, taking you from Germany to Africa to Southeast Asia. How have these diverse experiences shaped your view of healthcare and what brought you to Cambodia?
Dr. Elias: I was inspired early on by Albert Schweitzer, a doctor who built a hospital in Gabon (West Africa) and devoted his life to service. The compassion of medicine as meaningful work inspires me to this day. After medical school and travels through India, I realised I needed to specialise to truly contribute. Becoming a surgeon led me to head surgical departments across a hospital network in Nigeria in West Africa for five years, an experience that shaped how I think about healthcare systems under real-world pressure.
I first came to Cambodia in 2018 while completing my MBA, researching what motivates healthcare workers to pursue quality at Kampot Provincial Referral Hospital. Since then, I’ve stayed deeply involved in both clinical and strategic roles. I still see patients at Intercare Hospital, and I serve as the trusted physician for the German Embassy and Swiss Development Cooperation. But across all my work, whether with GIZ or hospital leadership, digital transformation is the common thread, linking frontline care to system-wide innovation.
Stew: As one of your first big projects as the new co-chair of the Healthcare Committee, you're working on a white paper on digital transformation and e-health in Cambodia. What was the inspiration for this project and what can you tell us about it?
Dr. Elias: Across all the roles I’ve held, digital transformation has been a common thread. What’s becoming clear now, is that digital health platforms are increasingly playing a role in Cambodia and they can be genuinely transformative. But this shift demands a new way of thinking. It’s not just about rolling out tools; it’s about aligning regulation, financing, and trust across multiple actors.
That’s what we’re supporting with the white paper. We’re not claiming to have all the answers; the space is too complex for that. But we see EuroCham as a neutral platform to convene dialogue between key stakeholders: the Ministry of Health, the tech community, legal experts, and the financial sector.
This is why members like the law firms Anant Law and DFDL are involved, along with other EuroCham sectoral committees. The aim is to shape a shared understanding of the legal and policy dimensions of e-health early enough to make a difference.
Stew: E-health seems to be a broad term covering a host of different technologies and strategies. Can you give a bit of an overview and some examples of how these digital technologies are changing healthcare?
Dr. Elias: It’s really an orchestration of tools we’re talking about, telehealth, AI, digital platforms, and eventually AI-agent networks. Some of these platforms function like Grab or Nham24, but for health: a digital intermediary connecting multiple providers.
But there are different models behind these platforms. One the one side, there are the “unified” digital health platforms that we see with big US tech companies. These players provide end-to-end infrastructure to massive, conglomerated healthcare groups. It’s powerful, but expensive and centralised.
On the flip side is what I call “multi-sided” digital health platforms. A standout example is HaloDoc in Indonesia. It connects a fragmented health sector of doctors, labs, pharmacies, and insurers through one app. In a country of thousands of islands, they’ve managed to bridge geographical and provider fragmentation in a way that expands access and lowers cost.
In many underserved communities, care now flows through local pharmacies, supported by digital coordination and AI. That’s not just a tech upgrade; it’s a different model of delivering universal health coverage.
Stew: The differences between just those two different models seem to highlight the broad scope of how these digital tools can be leveraged to accomplish different goals in different systems.
Do either of these strategies hold promise for Cambodia?
Dr. Elias: The contrast between those two models really shows how digital tools can be leveraged in very different ways depending on the system.
For Cambodia, I think the Indonesian model is especially promising. With HaloDoc, they managed to integrate a fragmented ecosystem: doctors, labs, imaging providers, and pharmacies into a single platform. We have around 6,000 micro-clinics scattered across the country and a considerable number of very small pharmacies.
Something like what they have in Indonesia could work here but tailored to where people are actually seeking care. In Cambodia, that’s often at small pharmacies. So, imagine this: a shop pharmacist who isn’t medically trained, interacting with a client. With the right digital platform, you could insert an AI layer, an interface between the pharmacist and the patient, that supports safer, more informed care linked to quality assurance.
The impact could be huge. You could tackle antimicrobial resistance, reduce polypharmacy, and even begin creating longitudinal health records for people who’ve never had any. And if you link that to national payment schemes, you’re suddenly talking about real progress on universal health coverage (UHC) on the service delivery side.
These are far-reaching ideas. But without minimal viable products, without moving in this direction, we can’t even begin the right conversations about access and equity.
And we’ll need legal innovation too. The World Bank recently published a report on digital health sandboxes showing how they can accelerate UHC progress. For Cambodia, the open legal landscape is an opportunity, not a risk.
Stew: How does the legal landscape impact the development of e-health? What’s sets Cambodia apart in the respect compared to other parts of the world?
Dr. Elias: In the US or Europe, you’ve got a very rigid legal system, which makes innovation much harder. Just look at the EU AI Act. It only came about after previous legislation failed to address the rise of new technologies. In Southeast Asia, and especially here in Cambodia, there’s more flexibility. A lot of the legal space is still open, which creates room for new approaches.
That’s where we see a big opportunity. In the EuroCham white paper, we’re proposing legal soft law instruments like regulatory sandboxes. The idea isn’t to jump straight into hard laws. Instead, start with guidelines. Create a safe space where innovators can test digital health platforms in a structured way, while regulators observe and learn.
For example, you can require that platforms be interoperable, that they work with existing systems, and that they meet secure data standards and fulfill privacy expectations. We want to help the government set those parameters now, before the market runs ahead.
Cambodia has done this before. Bakong, the national digital currency platform, started outside the legal framework within a sandbox environment. That outcome created massive economic momentum. For context, many European countries only recently introduced same-day bank transfers.
That was in fintech. But there’s a real chance for health service delivery to follow a similar path and be just as transformative.
Stew: The potential for these technologies appears transformative and far reaching. With your new position in the chamber, what do you hope to accomplish to facilitate the exploration and adoption of e-health in Cambodia?
Dr. Elias: We’re preparing to publish the white paper, but that’s just the beginning. We’re also planning a health forum that brings digital health and e-health to the forefront, using an integrated-systems lens to surface the full complexity of what’s at stake.
More broadly, I want to use this co-chair role to build bridges between EuroCham and the private sector players that it represents and key government stakeholders. The chamber is uniquely positioned as a trusted voice, especially when it comes to advising on legislation that supports both service quality and economic growth. EuroCham brings an investor perspective to the table, which has often been underrepresented in development-focused discussions.
What’s exciting is that EuroCham can contribute to a holistic view of the health system by including the voices of the private sector as the largest service provider by volume. These conversations go far beyond pharma. They touch on the financial sector, workforce strategies, digital infrastructure, and legal reform. That’s why I’m committed to using this position to help shape a legislative environment that attracts investment and establish Cambodia as a regional hub for health-tech innovation.
Much of this work draws on my role at Intercare Hospital, where I lead strategy and innovation. It’s a setting where vision meets implementation, whether that means applying AI tools, refining digital workflows, or forging collaborative partnerships. Intercare’s commitment to excellence, patient-centeredness, and social responsibility is what first brought me into the EuroCham space. These values guide how we approach digital health: not just as a technological upgrade, but as a way to deliver more inclusive, connected, and accountable care. That foundation helps ensure that what we’re discussing is grounded in both system design and lived operational realities.
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