11 Key Points

1. Leadership is key to establish and implement a digital health agenda.

2. Virtually all aspects of health are or will be supported by digital technologies. We therefore need appropriate investment in digital health, especially given the goals of UHC and integrated people-centered health services.

3. Meeting the SDGs requires better data management to achieve health targets (SDG 3), including UHC (SDG 3.8). Integrating siloed information systems offers greater access to data for research and clinical audit that, if well managed, can provide a marketable asset.

4. Governments should ensure stakeholders make good investments in digital health, and that all investments enable the achievement of the SDGs and UHC.

5. Different stakeholders have different requirements for sharing and exchanging health information. To make such exchanges meaningful, we need agreed policies and standards.

6. Support interoperability with an agreed information architecture that describes how the health system operates, the standards to be used, how data can be shared between agencies and to meets users’ needs.

7. Deploying digital health requires knowledge of local barriers to benefits realization and how to mitigate risks, like cybersecurity.

8. A proper understanding of the context and process for making digital health investments should help stakeholders make better decisions and defend the importance of durable, reusable digital health infrastructure.

9. Stakeholders in health include the population and individuals: the public (and those who happen to be patients); health workers who provide care (including the diagnostic and or therapy teams) to people in primary and secondary care settings; managers of health organizations (clinic or hospital administration); payers; investors and donors; planners and policymakers (including regulators and researchers). Each of them requires investments to help them meet their needs within the health system, and must be clear on what they want from investments.

10. Governments have particular responsibilities when it comes to investing in an enabling digital infrastructure, both technical and managerial. Building a strong case for these investments requires stakeholders to be ready and able to realize the benefits.

11. Most digital health investment decisions culminate in optimizing net socioeconomic benefits with financial affordability. Socioeconomic returns on investment (the difference between economic costs and benefits over time) give estimates of value for money. They are integrated with financial models that focus on affordability and the return on investment