Digital Health & Interoperability Working Group

Overview

The working group brings together over 100 technical experts from implementing partners, 12 countries, donors, academia, and civil society.

Currently co-chaired by USAID and WHO, the group is working on the following:

Optimizing the meaningful use and reuse of health information technology in low and middle income countries to support achievement of SDGs through the implementation of foundational digital health infrastructures;
Actively promoting the development, use, and long-term support of digital health ‘global public goods’; and
Increasing, in a measurable way, the level and alignment of country and partner investments in support of Objectives 1 and 2.

Our overall aim is improved coordination - to move away from fragmented development approaches to a more strategic way of investing in and supporting global health efforts.

HIS Interoperability Maturity Toolkit

Enabling exchange of data between disparate health information systems—or interoperability of health information systems—holds great promise for overcoming barriers to data quantity, quality, and accessibility.

Many low-resource settings, however, do not have the guidance and tools to assess their capacity to implement interoperable systems. Some factors critical to successful implementation of interoperable information systems have not previously been well-defined. To address this gap, the MEASURE Evaluation project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Digital Health and Interoperability Technical Working Group of the Health Data Collaborative, have developed an HIS Interoperability Maturity Toolkit.

The kit contains three main pieces: a maturity model, an assessment tool, and a users’ guide. It also offers a complete list of the references consulted in a literature review that was conducted as part of the toolkit’s development.

View the full toolkit here.