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Openness and value in the digital health sector
Openness and value in the digital health sector

The value of open source software goes far beyond cost. Open source software does provide a set of cost-effective, adaptable options for countries, but the benefits of open source are more complex and nuanced than cost savings. The growth of the open source ecosystem is due in large part to an ethos of openness that has reduced barriers of entry for new solutions, allowed countries the flexibility to deploy customizable solutions to meet their needs, and provided key capacity-building opportunities for emergent entrepreneurs and technologists in the countries where these systems were being deployed. Open source software can also deepen country ownership of their digital health systems, expanding a country’s choices for data hosting, vendor support, and applications beyond a single health vertical or program.

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Digital SquareDigital SquareOpen Source, OpenLMIS, Sustainability, Resiliency, Openness, Value, CommunityComment
How digital health maturity can inform global goods design
How digital health maturity can inform global goods design

In 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.

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Global GoodsDigital SquareGlobal Goods, Maturity Model, Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group, Digital Health Atlas, AnalyticsComment
2019 Global Digital Health Forum
2019 Global Digital Health Forum

The Digital Square team, along with other members of PATH’s Center of Data and Digital Excellence will be joining colleagues and collaborators from around the world for the 2019 Global Digital Health Forum. This year's Forum - Celebrating Innovation and Supporting Proven Practices at Scale - seeks to balance the need for evidence based scaling of proven systems with the urgent need to determine how emerging technologies and approaches can dramatically improve health outcomes.

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Digital SquareDigital SquareGlobal Digital Health Forum, BID Initiative, Skye Gilbert, Digital Square, #GDHF2019Comment
Making good on the promise of digital: The growth of Digital Square
Making good on the promise of digital: The growth of Digital Square

Imagine this: your community is threatened with a disease that kills one of every two people infected. You hear rumors about new cases that seem to be drawing closer to your neighborhood, but official reports disagree. You see international groups coming in to help. But they won’t let you bury your loved ones. They say they must “track” you with their mobile phones since you were at an event with someone who was exposed. How do you know that your local health facility is equipped to handle this disease or that health workers know the proper treatment? What information do you trust?

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Digital SquareDigital SquareDigital Square, Digital health, Success Story, PartnersComment
Taking flight: Co-investment from Digital Square and DIAL, a catalyst for OpenCRVS
Taking flight: Co-investment from Digital Square and DIAL, a catalyst for OpenCRVS

Civil registration is critical for human rights and effective governance. Globally, almost half of the world’s children, most of them in Africa, do not have their birth registered and are consequently invisible in the eyes of the law. Being Invisible, they are vulnerable to many forms of abuse and neglect. They may also be unable to access health services because their governments do not know they exist. It is not only births that go uncounted, around two-thirds of all deaths currently go unregistered, leaving the details of death unknown and potential responses to their causes impossible.   

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Global GoodsDigital SquareGlobal Good, OpenCRVS, FHIR, HL7, DIAL, civil registrationComment
The power of community—improving OpenMRS Sync 2.0 after its release
The power of community—improving OpenMRS Sync 2.0 after its release

Earlier 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. 

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Global GoodsDigital SquareOpenMRS, Global Goods, Global Good, SolDeveloComment
Strengthening DHIS2 data visualizations: DHIS2-to-Power BI connector
Strengthening DHIS2 data visualizations: DHIS2-to-Power BI connector

Recently, the use of DHIS2 by several Ministries of Health, global health and development organizations to collect, manage and visualize routine program data has reached a new level of sophistication, with many countries using DHIS2 at national scale on several health areas and with increased data granularity. This has required more sophisticated and robust data use for adaptive program management, and data users are demanding more advanced analytics capabilities beyond DHIS2’s core functionality

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Global GoodsDigital SquareDHIS2, BI Connector, Data, Data Visualization Comments
Shared points of interest: Maps helping to coordinate digital health
Shared points of interest: Maps helping to coordinate digital health

Maps are an important visualization tool. They translate information from values and text fields into something we can grasp more quickly. Throughout the global health sector, maps are being used to bring transparency to data sets in new ways—and to help foster coordination in delivering effective health programs. 

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Global GoodsDigital SquareGlobal Good, Digital Health Atlas, Healthsites, Health Facilities, Maps, GISComment
GOFR-Connect: Unlocking subdistrict data in Guinea
GOFR-Connect: Unlocking subdistrict data in Guinea

Jean Mory Millimono sits in an office at the Regional Health Directorate in Faranah, Guinea. As a Statistics Manager, Jean works with data to better understand the health of more than 900,000 people in his region. He uses the data available to him through Guinea’s health information management system—District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2)—to better understand the health services and needs of these communities. However, until recently, data in DHIS2 could only be analyzed at the regional, district, and health facility level, keeping Jean and his counterparts in other subdistricts from effectively monitoring health indicators and comparing the performance of facilities within the same municipality.

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Global GoodsDigital SquareGOFR, GOFR-Connect, Guinea, Global GoodComment
Coordinating digital transformation: Three case studies
Coordinating digital transformation: Three case studies

Digital technology has changed the way health information is collected, used, and communicated, and it has the potential to dramatically improve health service delivery. Health workers are better able to track and serve patients, health officials are better able to allocate resources, and patients have greater access to information to fulfill their health care needs. However, poor coordination in the digital health sector has led to duplicate systems, fragmented data, and frustration for health workers, decision-makers, and patients alike. The sector is recognizing this historic lack of coordination as a barrier to its collective success. To address it, governments and donors are forging a new way forward.

The Coordinating Digital Transformation case study series explores three examples of how stakeholders came together to create mechanisms for coordinating digital health investments and implementations, and as a result are improving the quality and use of health data.

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Resources, Digital SquareDigital SquareDonors, Governance, Policy, Digital Health, Ethiopia, Nepal, TanzaniaComment
Beyond interoperability: Working together in the age of digital health
Beyond interoperability: Working together in the age of digital health

The Global Goods Guidebook is the newest addition to the resources supporting greater collaboration in the digital health sector.  

Digital 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. 

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Global Goods, Resources, Digital SquareDigital SquareGlobal Goods, Guidebook, Digital Health, Open Source, ICT4D, Coordination Comment
Solving the sync challenge: OpenMRS Sync 2.0
Solving the sync challenge: OpenMRS Sync 2.0

Digital health continues to change the way health systems reach communities around the world. However, when internet connectivity is limited or intermittent, health workers do not reap the full benefits of digital tools. This is a barrier that SolDevelo is working to remove. Last year, SolDevelo began working on a new module for the Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS), an open source medical records platform.

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Global GoodsDigital SquareOpenMRS, BandwidthComment
A digital vision of health equity
A digital vision of health equity

Digital Square is pleased to announce its new Executive Director, Skye Gilbert. 

In this role, Skye will help guide the future of Digital Square’s co-investment, global goods, country capacity, and regional partnership work. When she is not busy driving towards health equity, Skye can be found rock climbing or skiing in the mountains. Read more about her motivation for leading Digital Square.

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People, Digital SquareDigital SquareHealth Equity, Digital Health Comment
Introducing the DHIS2 Community of Practice
Introducing the DHIS2 Community of Practice

Nearly 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…

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Global GoodsDigital SquareDHIS2, Community, Community of Practice, Global GoodsComment
Digital Square investing in nine proposals to strengthen digital health software tools
Digital Square investing in nine proposals to strengthen digital health software tools

Digital Square is pleased to announce that nine proposals were selected for investment as part of our third round of funding, Notice C, which included two announcements, Notice C0 and Notice C1. A total of $1.26 million is being invested into these digital health software tools by multiple donors. One of these donors, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), committed a total of $151,827 to coinvest alongside Digital Square’s funding for Notice C1. Notice C was implemented using Digital Square’s Open Proposal Process and Platform (OPP&P). Concept notes and proposals were publicly posted, giving submitters the opportunity to find collaborators and provide and receive feedback from peers. The iterative feedback and proposal process allowed submitters to refine and strengthen their concepts before final submission. More information on our proposal process can be found here.

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Global Goods, Digital SquareDigital SquareInvestment, Notice C, OpenLMIS, OpenMRS, OpenELIS, mHero, OpenHIE, DHIS2, Bahmni, Nepal, Open Application ProcessComment
How co-investment sparks collaboration
How co-investment sparks collaboration

People 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.

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Digital SquareDigital SquareCo-Investment, Collaboration, Global Goods, Open Application ProcessComment
Global Digital Health Forum: Washington, DC, Dec. 10-11
Global Digital Health Forum: Washington, DC, Dec. 10-11

The Digital Square team, along with other members of PATH’s Digital Health Program will be joining colleagues and collaborators from around the world for the 2018 Global Digital Health Forum. This year, the Forum explores how new frameworks like the Classifications of Digital Health Interventions can help us design a shared language for digital health. With a shared language, digital health practitioners are better able to create holistic, seamless digital health systems that make use of different tools, partners, and workflows to meet the diverse and ever-changing needs of a country’s health care system.

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Digital SquareDigital SquareGDHF2018, Digital HealthComment
Position Available: Project Administrator, Digital Square
Position Available: Project Administrator, Digital Square

PATH is currently recruiting for a Project Administrator (PADM) Officer for its Digital Health Program’s Digital Square team. The PADM Officer will manage the contractual and financial requirements of their assigned projects within Digital Square’s portfolio of awards. S/he will provide guidance to the technical team regarding U.S. Government Regulations on Contracts and Cooperative Agreements; ensure financial allowability, allocability, and reasonableness of costs; and provide oversight and guidance to financial management practices.

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