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Given the shifts in the ecosystem over the past several years and in response to community feedback, Digital Square recently launched a special call for applications, Notice G, which is dedicated to funding digital health technologies worldwide that qualify as global goods. Existing global goods are invited to participate in this call.
Read MoreOver the last year, Digital Square has worked with the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) and the WHO Digital Clearinghouse to clarify how each group uses these terms, how they overlap, and how they are different. And while Digital Square focuses on global goods related to the health sector, the DPGA considers digital public goods across the Sustainable Development Goals including topics like climate change and education.
Read MoreEach quarter, Digital Square shines the spotlight on global goods and innovators in our community through our Global Goods Community Newsletter. Lenara Tupa'i-Fui is the Acting CEO of Health Information Technology & Communications at the Ministry of Health, Government of Samoa.
Read MoreJust as physical commodities flow a through supply chain, supply chain information systems (SCIS) enable the flow of commodity data—that is, the data needed to ensure that medicines move from the manufacturer to national warehouses to health facilities and, finally, to patients. Weak information systems hinder effective response to stockouts, expiries and other supply chain exceptions, as well as the efficient procurement and distribution of health commodities to patients.
Read MoreLaboratories are a key part of a health system, and laboratory information systems (LIS) play an important role in managing data for clinical decision making, disease screening, monitoring, blood safety, and surveillance. As countries try to meet the growing demand for LIS data, ministries have look to open source LIS options like OpenELIS Global, BLIS, and Senaite.
Read MoreThe OpenHIE Academy was formally launched in January 2021. An exploratory discussion at the 2019 OpenHIE Community Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, led to the concept of an online academy. The OpenHIE Academy was created to orient learners to the essential concepts, and competencies needed to understand the role of OpenHIE as a health information exchange supporting data for decision making at all levels of the health system.
Read MoreEach quarter, Digital Square shines the spotlight on global goods and innovators in our community through our Global Goods Community Newsletter. Linda Taylor is a Product Delivery Manager at Jembi Health Systems.
Read MoreEach quarter, Digital Square shines the spotlight on global goods and innovators in our community through our Global Goods Community Newsletter. Annah Ngaruro is a Project Management Institute-certified Project Management Professional and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional with 20 years of experience developing and supporting health information systems for variety of US government agencies. She is currently the DATIM Data Exchange and Interoperability portfolio lead responsible for providing the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy (S/GAC) Program Results for Impact Monitoring and Epidemic Control (PRIME) with portfolio leadership and product ownership for the data exchange and interoperability portfolio within the DATIM systems teams.
Read MoreWhen it comes to sustainability, one of the challenges faced by many open source digital solutions is the availability of sufficiently skilled developers to support and maintain the core product. At OpenMRS, the community discovered that greater adoption strained the availability of a small number of experienced developers, project managers, business analysts, and technical writers.
Read MoreDuring any disease outbreak, real-time communication between national health authorities and frontline health workers is critical to protecting health workers and saving lives. IntraHealth International’s mHero application—a two-way, mobile phone-based communication system that connects ministries of health and health workers—is designed to do exactly that.
Read MoreThere is an unprecedented effort underway to develop safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. Through COVAX, lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) may receive enough vaccine doses for 20% of their population. Only if the vaccine is efficiently and equitably delivered will it stem the spread of the pandemic and speed economic recovery for hundreds of millions of people. LMICs will require robust and mature digital solutions to achieve this immense task.
Read MoreEach quarter, Digital Square shines the spotlight on global goods and innovators in our community through our Global Goods Community Newsletter. This interview was first shared in May 2020.
Read MoreOver the last six months, MedicMobile has built a series of CHT-powered tools to respond and mitigate the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic, as well as supporting new and existing partners to embed these tools into their systems to prevent the spread of disease, protect the most vulnerable, and provide care for those impacted by COVID-19.
Read MoreDigital technologies play an important role in the COVID-19 global response. Countries have leaned on digital and data systems to monitor, track, and manage their caseloads. They use data provided through these systems to better allocate resources and gain a clearer understanding of how COVID-19 is impacting their communities.
But with a large and growing selection of tools available, how do countries and donors know what tools are available? And importantly, what tools best suit their unique needs?
Read MoreIn a world of rapidly changing digital technologies, eHealth has become a major enabler for government to deliver quality services to the population using digital information and communication technologies.
To further this front, UNICEF Uganda in conjunction with IntraHealth International and GoodCitizen have supported the Ministry of Health to deploy a groundbreaking technology that will seamlessly integrate two of the Ministry of Health’s Community Health Information Systems, the RapidPro based FamilyConnect and the iHRIS based Community Health Worker (CHW) Registry.
Read MoreThe recent emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of strong laboratory systems for detecting outbreaks of infectious diseases, as well as for other personal and population health purposes such as monitoring HIV viral load suppression among patients receiving antiretroviral treatment, or measuring pathogen resistance to antibiotics.
Read MoreEach quarter, Digital Square shines the spotlight on global goods and innovators in our community through our Global Goods Community Newsletter. This interview was first shared in May 2020.
Read MoreSince 2013, Uganda has worked closely with DHIS2 Tracker developers to configure and test Tracker to support case investigation and lab linkage of notifiable diseases. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 case investigation data needs were added to Uganda's eIDSR system.
Read MoreWhen LEGO blocks were first created, they were designed around “the system”—that is, all bricks will fit together with all other bricks forever. Pieces vary in color and shape, but the underlying system allows a brick produced 50 years ago to fit snugly with one produced today. New pieces can be added and designs customized for specific projects but, in the end, all LEGO bricks work together.
Read MoreDigital Square’s Open Application Process (OAP) is an innovative approach to procurement that encourages collaborative thinking. The OAP is more than a standard competitive process; the OAP’s platform encourages applicants to share and engage with each other to crowd-source the most interoperable, adaptable tools and technologies for digital health investments.
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