Infrastructure, Standards and Interoperability
Many countries continue to struggle with siloed approaches and the technological legacy they have left behind. There is a significant push to develop digital health architecture that is aligned to country needs and readiness with technical specifications and standards to connect digital health applications and optimise investments. Interoperability is highly valuable but is also complex and technical, requiring ongoing updates to standards, monitoring of application programming interfaces or APIs, capacity building, governance, coordination, testing, and guidance development. These efforts are designed to support more sustainable and interoperable investments that can provide more value and return on investment.
Governments need to assess the state of their digital health infrastructure, and develop a solid costed plan to roll out of their digital public infrastructure. Governments need to develop guidelines for common standards and interoperability and maintain a registry of digital health and technology partners to ensure compliance with these standards.