This Vision for Action in Digital Health charts a course to sharpen the investments of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in health-sector digital technologies and the data they enable in our partner countries. This policy guidance for USAID’s staff will advance a new generation of strategic digital-health investments. It identifies four priorities for USAID’s planning, procurement, and delivery of activities in global health.
Digitization unlocks increased access to health data, the use of which can inform more precisely targeted and adaptive decision-making at all levels of health care. The pandemic of COVID-19 underscores the critical need to use digital tools and data together. The response to COVID-19 requires detailed, often granular level understanding of the disease, its spread, and its immediate and second-order impacts, as well as situational awareness of what resources are available and where they are located within a country, to enable their effective deployment. Digital technologies are essential to generating and analyzing data to inform the preparation for, and response to, infectious diseases in a timely manner. These efforts include the effective allocation of personnel, financial resources, and logistics and supplies necessary to direct a pandemic response and maintain access to critical health care.
