Overview
Digital Square partners closely with governments, ministries of health, and other coalitions in East Africa to identify priorities for digital health at the country and regional levels, supporting cross-country collaborations and learnings. We provide a range of services based on the needs of a specific country, such asadvising countries on standards, designing a digital health enterprise architecture, or supporting global goods implementation. We also work to improve community health, strengthen primary healthcare systems, and support COVID-19 response and immunization processes.
Highlights from the region
In Tanzania, Zambia, and Uganda, Digital Square–supported by The Rockefeller Foundation—leverages digital and data tools to drive effective vaccine demand generation interventions and make national health systems more proactive through the Digital tools for impactful Results to Improve Vaccine Equity (DRIVE Demand) initiative.
In Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, Digital Square works with the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and Digital Community Health Initiative (DCHI) to promote generational change in community health services—primarily disease case management—by strengthening adoption and use of digital health technologies in data management and use.
In Malawi, Tanzania, and Ghana, the Digital Innovation and Pandemic Control (DIPC) Project is leveraging learnings from COVID-19 to bring digital health technical expertise to countries to create more pandemic-prepared health systems. The DIPC project launched in 2021 with funding from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and in partnership with Digital Square, the Digital Health Centre of Excellence (DICE), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
With funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Digital Square is working with Ministries of Health in Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania to conduct root cause analyses (RCA) to diagnose the root causes of COVID-19 vaccination data backlogs. Findings will be used to develop unique packages of interventions that can be implemented by country specific decision-makers to address the root causes.
In Tanzania and Kenya, with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Digital Square is catalyzing adoption of standard based and Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) compliance data exchange in the health sector through adaptation of the OpenHIE standards and architecture. In Kenya, Digital Square is strengthening capacity within the digital health ecosystem by transitioning existing data health systems to be compliant with FHIR and HL7 standards. Tanzania is championing standard-based information system data exchange by adopting the OpenHIE standards and architecture, and has deployed a fully functional Health Interoperability Mediator system built on OpenHIE platform managing over 30 disparate health information systems.