Description of Session
Why is it taking so long to scale up digital health? Three years ago, Digital Square was launched as a partnership of 40 organizations working together to solve three well-known barriers to scale in digital health: (1) fragmented, uncoordinated investments, (2) lack of investment into interoperability and other scale-related requirements for health software, and (3) large capacity gaps in digital health. In response to each of these barriers, Digital Square has been building, experimenting and learning about solutions. To coordinate and align investments, Digital Square has been iterating and learning about governance structures, procurement mechanisms, knowledge management platforms and a series of financing mechanisms with the aim of making coordination easier for all involved. To improve the pathways to scale for global goods, Digital Square has been learning about marketplace structures, global good development needs, and required norms, standards, policies and guidelines to support scale. To strengthen capacity, Digital Square has been learning about governance and coordination strategies for country digital transformation efforts, and approaches to supporting digital health learning for country government leaders and technocrats. This TED Talk is designed to share what we’ve learned, provoke discussion on unanswered questions we are grappling with, and engage the community in shaping the future of Digital Square. We will share achievements, failures and lessons learned; where the initiative is heading; and why that matters for both scaling digital health global goods and accelerating country-led digital transformation of health systems. At the close of this TED Talk, we would like to launch version 0 of our strategy for community input, reflection and engagement. Our hope is that with this session, we provoke conversation about where and how we as a community can work together to help accelerate the scale of digital interventions in health systems.
