Using Technology to Advance Global Health Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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4 Country-Level Digital Health Strategies
4 Country-Level Digital Health Strategies
Pages 25-38
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From page 25... ...
(Oyedepo) • Establishing governance structures, building technical and intellectual capacity, and empowering government to ask fundamental questions can lead to sustainability.
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From page 26... ...
While digital technology can improve health outcomes, particularly in low-resource settings, a fragmented landscape of actors and interests working to implement digital health solutions can lead to a lack of coordination, waste, and unrealized benefits. There can be an opportunity to build health solutions around market needs in a coordinated and integrated way if digital health strategies are aligned with the health priorities established by countries and communities.
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From page 27... ...
Taking this approach and repeating it in neighboring villages, the goal is to create malaria-free zones and to use the data the community health workers collect to help decision makers at all levels best direct resources. Myrick noted this approach has cut the number of malaria cases in the Southern Province and the number of malaria deaths significantly over several rainy seasons (see Figure 4-1)
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From page 28... ...
Myrick contacted the Tableau Zen Masters, a collection of some 25 customers and partners who are experts at using Tableau and data in general, and asked if they would be interested in helping eliminate malaria in Zambia. "Absolutely," was the answer, but the Zen Masters soon realized they needed additional resources for this project, and they contacted other consulting firms to lend their expertise, pro bono, to the project.
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From page 29... ...
In addition, PATH's 10-year working relationship with the Zambian Ministry of Health meant there was on-the-ground expertise in both the local cultures and how the government worked. While the teenage technology companies provided the technology, PATH provided the expertise in how to assemble those technologies in an effective way to meet the needs of the government.
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From page 30... ...
You have to go to the country, and you have to meet people and build those relationships." She added that few donors fund collaboration and convening activities and that with a mandate to do this kind of work, the initiative can act as a neutral broker that can bring the "usual global [development] players" together with technology companies, governments, and the people working locally in these countries to have the conversations needed to create effective partnerships.
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From page 31... ...
These efforts paid off, said Oyedepo, because the resulting conversations with potential partners in government, the private sector, international development organizations, and the health sector became more than just listening to presentations and taking notes. "We had individuals in the room who could drive a discussion about how digital [strategies]
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From page 32... ...
The network then received additional support from the Norwegian Agency for Development, USAID, and Canada's International Development Research Centre to build a platform for developing solutions. After five annual meetings of the network, trusted relationships have developed that enabled members to help each other solve health information systems' interoperability problems.
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From page 33... ...
For a governance structure, the network has adopted the COBIT 5 framework developed by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, and 22 people from network countries have become framework certified. Marcelo said that these individuals now have the confidence that they can manage the complexity involved in creating and managing an interoperable, nationwide eHealth information system.
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From page 34... ...
"I think that is a good way to model public–private partnerships, where government shows leadership and the private sector shows support." As a final comment, he said AeHIN is starting to work with countries in Africa and hopes to start a collaboration soon with Oyedepo's group in Nigeria, which is also certifying people in COBIT 5. POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES TO ACHIEVE SCALE When asked to comment on how Tableau perceives the business opportunities for applying its products and services to global health, Myrick noted that he runs the company's social impact team, whose mission is to encourage the use of facts and analytical reasoning to solve the world's problems.
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From page 35... ...
As an example, he cited the company Alteryx, whose specialty is data transformation. In this case, the company's software takes District Health Information Software data, combines it with other data, and configures it into a format from which Tableau's software can produce reports.
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From page 36... ...
The hope is that such a marketplace would not only enable small technology companies to engage in those markets and for the information technology people in those markets to access innovative products, but it would also make the procurement process more transparent and perhaps eliminate some of the corruption that often accompanies procurement processes. Alain Labrique asked Marcelo about his perspective on incentivizing the engagement of large health care provider systems that have no inherent incentive other than a legislative requirement to be interoperable with a government-led registry system when they can function independently.
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From page 37... ...
"One thing that needs to be thought through by donors and development partners in or outside of the country, and even the government, is the need to make the application of technology systemic," said Oyedepo. In some cases, he said, this will require, as Marcelo noted earlier, going back and creating frameworks and fixing existing systems before introducing a new technology to a broken system.
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From page 38... ...
He added that he is optimistic that the example that USAID and BMGF have set by supporting and promoting PATH's digital health initiative to end fragmentation will prompt other funders to follow suit.
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