Description of Session
The global digital health community extolls the importance of coordination and local ownership of digital health programs, especially during nation-wide digital transformation. However, many countries face entrenched and complex challenges in their health systems, especially when trying to establish and scale digital platforms. Future-looking governance efforts put in place by national governments are helping to address historical challenges with fragmented digital health activities and improve the coordination among donors and implementing partners. This session will highlight key successes in digital health governance in three countries. Leaders and implementers from national governments and partners of these governance initiatives will lead a dialogue on the factors that made these initiatives successful. • Tanzania: Building on its Digital Health Investment Road Map, the Government of Tanzania recently launched a new Digital Health Strategy for the next five years, aligning and accelerating efforts in digitalization of PHC, improving collaboration between health systems stakeholders at the national, regional, and district levels, and taking steps to institutionalize data use across health worker cadres. This session will discuss how the new Strategy was created, and what impact Tanzanian leaders expect it will have on the health system. • Nepal: In 2019, PATH published a case study that explores how Nepal’s e-Health Strategy has allowed the government to lead on establishing a vision for digital health and aligning stakeholders around priority goals and activities. Factors that have made Nepal’s efforts to improve digital health governance successful include strong political will to accelerate digital health progress and the willingness of global and regional organizations to put resources behind Nepal’s vision for improving digital health governance. • DRC: In response to the Ebola outbreaks in 2018, and in order to make the best use of information technologies to improve the health of DRC citizens, the Ministry of Health set up a decentralized digital health agency, the National Agency for Clinical Engineering, Information, and Health Informatics (Agence Nationale d’Ingénierie Clinique d’Information et d’Informatique de Santé, or ANICiiS). ANICiiS was created in December 2018 by Prime Minister Decret and launched in March 2019.
