Digital Health Position Paper 2024-2029
USAID envisions a world in which all people have equitable access to safe, secure, and high-quality health services to promote health and well-being. To support reaching this goal in an era of increasing digitalization, the USAID Digital Health Position Paper (2024–2029) lays out a strategic vision for USAID investments and activities that advance global health using digital technologies.
Digital Health Position Paper (2024-2029) recommits to the four strategic priorities of the Digital Health Vision (2020-2024, read below), and introduces six promising practices for investments in partner country-based digital health technologies.
PRIORITIES:
Assess and strengthen a country’s digital health enabling environment
Align digital health investments to national digital health strategies
Align digital health investments to national digital health architecture
Consider the use of global goods
Based on the experience of implementing the Digital Health Vision, the Digital Health Position Paper also identifies key learnings that are conveyed as practices.
PRACTICES:
Commit to person-centered point-of-care digital systems
Require data standards to enable integrated health service delivery at scale
Support country-led governance of health system digital transformation
Strengthen data privacy and cybersecurity practices, and related country regulations
Deepen engagement with local partners, including the private sector
Invest in shared resources that advance the global digital health commons
By implementing these priorities and practices, USAID and its partners can unlock the full potential of digital transformation to improve equitable access to the safe, secure, and reliable health information and services needed to promote well-being.
Read the Fact Sheet on the Digital Health Position Paper.
Read the full Digital Health Position Paper.
Digital Health Vision: Technical Guidance Notes Series
The following Technical Guidance Notes Series provides support to USAID staff and partners implementing the USAID Digital Health Vision. This series offers promising approaches, resources, and recommended actions aligned to USAID’s Program Cycle to help USAID staff and partners put each of the four priorities of the Digital Health Vision into action.
Overview: An introduction to the USAID Digital Health Vision Technical Guidance Notes Series.
Note 1: Strengthening Country Digital Health Capacity: Technical guidance on how to strengthen country-level capacity to manage digital health systems and the data they enable, through targeted support to a country’s digital health enabling environment.
Note 2: Advancing National Digital Health Strategies: Technical guidance on advancing national digital health strategies to bolster country governance of digital health systems.
Vision for Action in Digital Health 2020-2024
USAID’s Vision for Action in Digital Health is the Agency’s first dedicated policy guidance for its investments in digital technologies that support health programs in its partner countries.
This Digital Health Vision builds on prior USAID policy, including the Digital Strategy, and interprets that guidance for the global health sector, alongside USAID’s Vision for Health System Strengthening 2030. The Digital Health Vision also charts a path for the implementation of the Principles of Donor Alignment for Digital Health, which USAID co-authored and endorsed in 2018.
The Vision addresses the challenges of fragmentation, and lack of sustainability and interoperability, of many digital health technologies used in USAID’s partner countries. To address these challenges the Vision outlines a systems-level approach to supporting partner countries’ health sector digital transformation.
In support of this Vision, the policy document identifies four priorities to guide related USAID planning, procurements, and programs. These are to assess and support:
- country digital health capacity,
- national digital health strategies,
- national digital health architecture, including where relevant through the use of global goods.
Fundamentally, the Vision presents a roadmap for how USAID can strategically support its partner countries as they strengthen the digital transformation of their health sectors, especially by encouraging careful planning, interoperability, strong governance, and long-term sustainability.
