Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group

Introduction

The Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group (DH&I WG) is a volunteer community of practice dedicated to strengthening country health systems and outcomes through the appropriate and responsible use of digital information technologies. Its membership comprises over 250 individuals from governments, donors, multilateral organizations, academia, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Working Group meets monthly by phone, and annually in person alongside the Global Digital Health Forum. It is co-chaired by USAID, WHO, and the Regenstrief Institute, with Digital Square providing Secretariat support, which includes hosting this wiki.

Objectives

1. Optimize the meaningful use and reuse of health information technology in low- and middle-income countries to support achievement of SDGs through the implementation of foundational digital health infrastructures;
2. Actively promote the development, use, and long-term support of digital health global public goods; and
3. Increase, in a measurable way, the level and alignment of country and partner investments in support of Objectives 1 and 2.

Shared Values

Open

We are open, honest, and actively transparent in both our processes and our work together.

We believe it's important to publicly document and share our knowledge, skills, experiences, and failures.

We endorse and support the use of open health information standards, and work to apply them usefully within resource-constrained environments.

User-Centered

We respond to specific country and stakeholder demands, not our imagination.

We design highly adaptable processes and technologies to work in the most challenging environments.

We believe in upfront planning for sustainability.

Collaborative

We work collectively to prioritize and address the real-world needs of our workgroup participants.

We believe in the power of community, as the best ideas come from people with different backgrounds and talents.

We believe in harnessing the wisdom of our workgroup by creating a safe place to raise concerns, discuss failures, improve existing ideas, and solve problems.

Origins

The Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group is an independent community of practice forged among some of the world's leading digital health experts. It formalized in 2014 alongside USAID's Ebola Broad Agency Announcement to facilitate collaboration among digital health responders to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In 2016, the Working Group formed an affiliation with the Health Data Collaborative. Today, the group has grown to more than 250 members representing more than 100 organizations, governments, and multilateral and bilateral donors.

Membership

If you are interested in joining the DH&I Working Group, please complete the contact form here.

Small Working Groups

The DH&I Working Group forms small working groups that focus on areas of work that build consensus and coordinate in the development and use of tools in the digital health sector. The existing small working groups (SWGs) under the DH&I Working Group:

• Digital Health Capacity Strengthening & Curriculum
• Gender
• Governance
• Maturity Models
• Digital Health Supply Chain
• Artificial Intelligence & Maturity Model
• Digital Health & Climate Crisis
• Global Convergence

If you would like to join any of these SWGs, please complete this form.

Tools

The Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group has leveraged its platform for collective action to develop and/or contribute to the development of tools that respond to common country-identified health sector needs. These tools can be grouped into the following categories:

Terminology and classification

Standardizing the way we identify and describe digital health interventions and make evidence-based recommendations.

• WHO Classifications of Digital Health Interventions
• WHO Guideline on Digital Interventions for Health Systems Strengthening

Maturity assessments

Standardizing the way we assess countries digital health ecosystems, tools in use, and HIS digitization readiness, including for interoperability.

A new case study captures the initial work from the DH&I Small Working Group on this topic.

• WHO Digital Health Atlas
• Global Digital Health Index
• HIS Interoperability Maturity Toolkit
• HIS Stages of Continuous Improvement Toolkit

Investment and valuation tools

Inform the way investments in digital systems are planned, and the valuation of software global goods is determined.

• Software Global Goods: A Financial Valuation Framework
• Digital Health Investment Review Tool
• Global Goods Maturity Model

Curricula development

Building common pedagogical approaches to building capacity in the use of these and other digital health resources.

• Digital Health 101 for Policy Makers (under development)
• Introduction to Digital Health for Donors and other Funding Partners (under development)
• Digital Health Leadership Program (under development)

Community Alignment

The DH&I WG is proud to collaborate actively with other regional and thematic networks contributing to the strategic use of digital technologies in low-resource and emerging market settings. These include the:

• Asian eHealth Information Network (AeHIN)
• African Alliance of Digital Health Networks
• Global Digital Health Network
• Open Health Information Exchange Community