News: Digital Health

I used to tell colleagues I was better at discussing the benefits of breastfeeding and handwashing than health information systems. I have a background in natural childbirth instruction and community-based development, and when I started working in digital health a few years ago, I missed the human aspects of global health. I had a shiny new master’s degree in public health but felt lost in the conversations about canonical data models and...

Lalita Chauhan starts her day early to the sound of an alarm from her phone. A couple of years ago, she could not have imagined starting her day in such a high-tech way, much less owning a smartphone. As an ASHA (or accredited social health activist) in rural India, Lalita and other community health workers are benefitting from the country’s Digital India initiative, whereby the national government is transitioning paper-based services to digital...

We know that interoperability is key to improving the effectiveness and resilience of health information systems. As we've said before, it’s crucial to overcoming the fragmented and proprietary global health information systems we have today, and can allow governments and their stakeholders to make the most of their data, including extending, upgrading, and preserving it. Yet how do we move from that lofty goal to practical action? For us at...

Predictive analytics, rapid diagnostics, and portable, personal medical records promise a future where health systems are stronger and more efficient, and where anyone can live a longer, healthier, fuller life. But one of the prerequisites for this promised transformation is that health systems—whether they’re for diagnostics or patient records or lab results—are interoperable, meaning they can quickly and seamlessly exchange data using open...

SwitchPoint 2018 was an inspiring, passionate, and delightful indulgence: Spending two days in lush Saxapahaw, North Carolina, thinking about big ideas and learning from leading experts in small group sessions in between performance art and live music shows felt like such a departure from Conference As Usual. I felt space opening up in my brain to start really processing what the speakers were saying—the real act and action of listening versus...

Thousands of students now have 24/7 digital access to academic materials thanks to two new digital libraries. Until now, thousands of Uganda’s medical, nursing, health management, and allied health students had to share a small, cramped library with too few resources for the growing number of students. Many students were simply unable to check out the reference and academic materials needed to study effectively for their coursework and exams...

Facebook announced in January that WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion monthly active users—20% of the world’s population!—who send more than 60 billion messages every day. Of course, quickly messaging people via computing technology is not new. However, this communications medium could revolutionize the way we communicate with health workers and their clients. To give you a sense of WhatsApp’s reach and potential for improving global health: In...

Until now, many of Uganda’s 180,000 community health workers have gone unaccounted for in the formal health system. Who are they? What services are they providing, and who trained them? The Uganda Ministry of Health is using a new registry—developed using IntraHealth International’s open source iHRIS software—to find out. The registry tracks critical personnel data that answer these questions, and its implementation is one of the first steps in a...

The Department of Health of Jharkhand, India, is using the mSakhi mobile app as part of its ambitious program to screen clients in Ranchi district for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) with a focus on hypertension and diabetes. One in four Indians is at risk of dying prematurely—that is, before the age of 70—from an NCD, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). India is the first country to adapt the WHO’s global monitoring framework to...

In Kenya, the health workforce data provided through the integrated human resources information system (iHRIS) is turning fortunes around. When Kenya decentralized its health system management from one national hub to 47 individual county governments in 2013, young county departments of health found themselves struggling. They needed to identify, track, and monitor their workforces while facing looming staff shortages, labor disputes, and high...