The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with Member States and partners to leverage the benefits of the digital revolution sweeping across the globe. As the world turns its focus towards primary health care, universal health coverage and achieving ‘Health for All’, digital technology and tools have a key role to play improving health workers abilities to care for people and communities in reaching the targets.
If properly leveraged, and capacity support enabled for countries, digital health tools have the potential to strengthen health workers education and training, improve their performance, quality and productivity, support their management, and improve their interaction and link with broader system components such as medicines supply chains.
The World Health Assembly recently passed a resolution (WHA71.7) on Digital Health to help strengthen Member States digital health capabilities. WHO has equally been responding to related demands of Member States through its normative and technical assistance functions. WHO recently published its digital health guidelines and is currently developing a global strategy on digital health, alongside other initiatives harnessing digital technology, such as the WHO Academy.
WHO will continue to provide support to Member States through the further development of its programme of work on digital health and health workforce capacity building. Outputs from this programme will be combined with collaborative efforts such as the evidence syntheses by the Digital Health Education Collaboration (DHEC) to provide Member States with up-to-date normative guidance on digital health and workforce capacity development. Going forward, WHO will also leverage the work and opportunities provided by partners and other stakeholders in ensuring that global digital health is harnessed in a collective way that will ensure maximum impact.