On 16 February, WHO/Europe is hosting a 1-hour webinar exploring efforts and activities relating to monitoring the implementation of digital health across the European Region. This is the second in a series of webinars from the “Decoding Data and Digital Health” series that addresses several digital health topics of importance to countries in the Region, including health data governance and the growing use of telemedicine.
The webinar
A recent study by WHO/Europe and the Regional Centre for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br) of the Brazilian Network Information Centre (NIC.br) looked at selected national and international methodologies to monitor the implementation of digital health and found that despite their clear potential, digital health programmes and interventions are often not monitored or evaluated.
This 1-hour event, hosted by WHO/Europe’s Data and Digital Health team, will bring together a panel of experts involved in the study to discuss the importance of monitoring the implementation of digital health and efforts so far. It will also present the efforts made in the Latin American and Nordic contexts to have comparable data in the countries of these regions.
The webinar is open to the public. If interested in joining, please register here
The webinar panel includes (in alphabetical order):
- Alexandre Fernandes Barbosa, Head of Cetic.br;
- Christian Nøhr, Professor of Health Informatics, Department of Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark; Adjunct Professor, University of Tasmania, Australia; Adjunct Professor, University of Victoria, Canada; Research Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, United States of America;
- David Novillo Ortiz, Unit Head, Data and Digital Health, WHO/Europe;
- Elettra Ronchi, Digital Health and Data Governance Consultant, WHO; Adjunct Lecturer on Data Governance and Health Innovation, Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, France;
- Fabio Senne, Survey Project Coordinator, Cetic.br.
Monitoring the adoption of digital technologies for health
Monitoring the implementation of digital health is key to learning from initiatives and providing evidence that decision-makers can use to create digital health policies and allocate the needed resources.
The use of digital technologies for improving health-care delivery, the efficiency of health systems and the management of health-care facilities has expanded rapidly in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital health can also play a crucial role in achieving universal health coverage by making health care accessible to people in remote locations and building the capacity of health-care professionals.
The WHO/Europe/Cetic.br/NIC.br study covers 8 selected countries, spanning 3 WHO regions, all of which had reported eHealth/digital health monitoring and benchmarking. It consolidates available information on approaches and indicators employed in the past 5 years to monitor digital health by WHO, the European Commission, the Nordic eHealth Research Network (NeRN), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Working Group on the Measurement of Information and Communication Technology of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA) of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).