As chair of the G20 Presidency, India aims to highlight critical areas that require strengthening to improve global health, including a priority for Digital Health Innovations and Solutions to Aid Universal Health Coverage and Improve Healthcare Service Delivery. In this spirit, Digital Square at PATH in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, is facilitating an important conversation during G20 Health Week in Goa, India. This event is a unique opportunity for donors and digital health advocates to come together to align around a shared vision for digital health transformation, reaffirm a commitment to the Digital Investment Principles, and explore avenues to ensure country-driven investments in digital health. Discussions will elevate existing topics such as the WHO SMART Guidelines and their benefits in the pursuit of achieved health goals, in addition to proposing a new funding strategy which—when paired with standards-based guidelines—has the potential to advance the capable, interoperable, and sustainable digital health systems of tomorrow.
Panel Discussion: Operationalizing a Global Initiative on Digital Health
Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 5pm - 7pm IST | Grand Hyatt | Invite only
Moderator:
Zahra Lutfeali, Digital Square at PATH
Panelists:
Lav Agarwal, Additional Secretary- International Health, Digital Health & Public Health, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India
Mr. Lav Agarwal is a senior bureaucrat from Indian Administrative Services (IAS) from 1996 batch and hails from Andhra Pradesh cadre. He has over 25 years of experience in the area of administration and is currently managing national agendas, including Digital Health and Innovation, Disruptive Technologies, Public Health, Patient Safety, Infectious Disease Control programs, Climate Change and Health, Disaster Management and Rehabilitation, and International relations in Health. He has extensive experience in policy formulation, diplomatic negotiations in bilateral and multilateral settings, national legislative processes and large-scale program implementation.
He is leading digital health agenda and relevant policy matters in G-20, G-77, BRICS, United Nation bodies, including WHO, UNDP, UNAIDS, UNFPA. He tabled the World Health Assembly Resolution on Digital Health in 2018 and ensured its unanimous adoption. He was the Global Focal Point for Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) for past 2 years, which is the largest intergovernmental and multilateral forum on Digital Health, representing 34 countries and World Health Organization as members.
Dr. Alain Labrique, Director for the Department of Digital Health and Innovation, World Health Organization
Dr. Alain Labrique is the Director for the Department of Digital Health and Innovation at the World Health Organization. He is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative and Editor-in-Chief for the Oxford Open Digital Health journal. An infectious disease and population epidemiologist, he served until September of 2022 as Professor and the inaugural Associate Chair for Research in Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Labrique has led research in maternal, neonatal, and infant health in resource limited settings and was recognized as one of the Top 11 mHealth Innovators in 2011. He served as a lead author on the 2012 Bellagio Declaration on mHealth Evidence. In 2018, he was awarded the Excellence in International Public Health Practice Award and a Distinguished Alumnus award from Johns Hopkins University. Labrique has authored over 150 publications in high-impact journals, as well as many book chapters and technical reports on Digital Health and Emerging Infectious Diseases. His frameworks for Digital Health remains among the most cited. Labrique has served as a Technical Advisor to several international and global health agencies and Ministries of Health, was the Chair of the WHO Digital Health Guidelines Development Group and a member of the WHO Digital Health Roster of Experts.
Adele Waugman, Senior Digital Health Advisory, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Adele Waugman is Senior Digital Health Advisor at USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, seated in the Center for Innovation and Impact (CII). She is co-author of USAID’s Digital Health Vision, the Agency’s first dedicated policy guidance for investments in health-sector digital technologies and data systems that support country programs. She has authored and edited reports on trends at the intersection of digital technologies and international development, including Fighting Ebola with Information: Learning from the Use of Data, Information, and Digital Technologies in the West African Ebola Outbreak Response, and Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information-Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies.
Dr. Karin Källander, Senior Health Adviser and Chief of the Digital Health & Information Systems Unit, UNICEF
Dr. Karin Källander is a Senior Health Adviser and Chief of the Digital Health & Information Systems Unit in the UNICEF Health Programme. She was the co-founder of the COVID-19 Digital Health Centre of Excellence (DICE), a UNICEF-WHO co-led mechanism to deliver agile and coordinated technical assistance to National Governments on sustainable and scalable deployment of mature digital health solutions that address health priorities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a specialist in childhood pneumonia, digital health and health systems research as well as community-based primary healthcare. She lived 8 years in Uganda working for NGOs and in academia and is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Global Health at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
Dr. Oommen John, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Oommen John is a physician researcher with special interest in digital health implementation research. At BMGF he leads health systems design towards future ready, responsive and resilient health delivery system.
He is an elected fellow of the International Academy of Health Science Informatics and associate editor of Oxford Open Digital Health. He is a conjoint lecturer at Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney and Professor at Prasanna School of Public Health, Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
His research interests include evaluating the role of digital health interventions in improving clinical outcomes for chronic conditions. He led the evaluation of telehealth for strengthening primary health care across 11 members countries on behalf of WHO SEARO.
He serves on the International Advisory Board of Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health, scientific advisory committee at Foundation for Innovative Diagnostics (FIND). He has contributed to the WHO Digital Health Guidelines Development Group and ITU-WHO focus group on Artificial Intelligence for Health.