Opinion

Digital health

Digital health

By Susann Roth

Having worked in the last few years on digital health, I am excited to see that developing countries are investing in it. They recognize that legal frameworks in terms of data privacy and security are still nascent, that health informatics capacity is weak, and that stakeholders are struggling to understand concepts such as health data use, health informatics standards, interoperability, or enterprise architecture. Countries are investing in digital health because they acknowledge that they need to leverage digital health to improve health services and achieve universal health coverage. They have also looked at lessons learned from developed countries on digitalizing their health systems. In the case of Viet Nam, Ministry of Health officials are looking for instance at Canada, which has invested $2.15 billion in its digital Health Infoway and achieved an estimated $16 billion in benefits from investments in tele-health, drug information systems...  — blog.adb.org/blogs