The manual supports the Asian Development Bank’s Guidance for Investing in Digital Health, which sets out a way to find appropriate strategic directions for digital health. It also identifies a low success rate of digital technology projects in the public sector. About 30% fail totally. Between 50% to 60% are partial failures. This leaves at best, a 20% success rate. (“Digital Dividends” World Development Report World Bank 2016 p165). This poor performance and investment return emphasizes the need to rigorous investment appraisal of digital health programs and projects.

The guidance describes how to use the digital health impact framework (DHIF) to:

• identify appropriate, sustainable digital health programs and projects that achieve strategic goals; and
• produce information for business cases that decision makers need for effective investment decisions.

• The Manual has three main parts:
  • Concepts and Methodology;
  • Understanding the Digital Health Impact Framework Model; and
  • Illustrative Digital Health Impact Framework Models.

It is an aid to developing the information and skills needed to set up and use DHIF models. New users, an appropriate way ahead is to start with small-scale DHIF health models, then move on progressively to larger-scale models. Users should increase their DHIF experience gradually to deal with digital health’s increasing complexity.

There are ten steps