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Over 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 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 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 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 MoreIn the last three years, global digital health has grown from a small community into an integrated and high-priority part of the agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 3: ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all. With its growing visibility, fractures within the community have also become increasingly visible. Investments aren’t just fragmented because people aren’t aware of each other; they are also fragmented because people fundamentally disagree on how to achieve digital transformation of health systems in low-resource settings.
Read MoreEarlier this year, we shared our work on OpenMRS Sync 2.0. Here is an update on our continued work!
OpenMRS is a patient-centric medical record application that documents the details of interactions between health care providers and patients. The software gathers a patient’s treatment details into a single patient chart. The Sync 2.0 module improves the synchronization of data by providing a way for health workers to manually sync their data at a central office. As a long-time contributor to the OpenMRS community, SolDevelo saw the importance of these features. We began developing Sync 2.0 as a pro bono effort before pursuing funding through Digital Square. SolDevelo worked as the main coders on this software module.
Read MoreDigital health is experiencing unprecedented growth in coordination and collaboration. Governments, funders, technology experts, and implementers, are working together in new and innovative ways. Collaboration requires shared language, shared values, and a shared vision. Many of these were codified in 2015 with the Principles of Digital Development—a set of nine principles that guide our actions and partnerships. Then last year, donors endorsed a set of Digital Investment Principles. The Digital Investment Principles describe the role investors have in promoting scalable, sustainable, accessible, interoperable, and evidence-based digital health systems. Both sets of principles have rallied stakeholders around our shared responsibility to help countries meet their digital health needs.
Read MoreNearly a decade ago, the global community that uses District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2) began reaching out to one another in forums and email chains to work through complex problems. They wanted to know if others had encountered a challenge, and, if so, how they solved it. Could they avoid “reinventing the wheel”? What lessons could be learned from the experience of others and could they apply them to their challenge?
Everyone was longing for one central place to connect with each other—to find relevant resources, share user stories and solutions, and ask for support…
Read MorePeople often think of innovation in digital health as a new device or tool. But innovation most often doesn’t materialize into an object that one can ever touch or feel. Whether it be approaches to scale or investment models, the real innovations in digital health are the approaches taken to navigate hurdles to help countries appropriately harness digital systems and tools to improve health outcomes. Digital Square fully embraces all kinds of innovation in the digital health space. We are at our core, an innovative investment mechanism, supported by a growing consortium of donors; something very unique in the global health ecosystem.
Read MoreDigital Square is pleased to announce that ten proposals were selected for investment as part of our second round of funding, Notice B. More information on the criteria for funding can be found in the Call for Proposals—Notice B, located on the Digital Square Wikipedia page. A total of $1.2 million is being invested into these digital health software tools. The funding recipients have also committed a total of $400,000 to co-invest alongside Digital Square’s funding.
Read MoreLast month at the Global Digital Health Forum, I introduced Digital Square to many colleagues. “Digital Square is an innovative co-investment mechanism,” I said. “Yes, but what exactly does Digital Square do?” was a common response.
Here’s what we do.
Read MoreToo often, “innovation” in the fields of health and information communications technology (ICT) is equated with the creation of something entirely new. Instead of re-inventing a technology or solution that already exists—which leads to duplication and waste—we can leverage those that already exists.
Read MoreLast week we launched Digital Square, a new global initiative connecting the world for better health.
Development dollars are scarce. Digital Square introduces an innovative approach to funding in the health sector. It’s a simple but powerful concept called co-investment. Through co-investment, we maximize the impact of digital health financing from individuals and organizations in public and private sectors.
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