Digital Health Collaborative Launch

Participants during the in-person convening and launch of the Digital Health Collaborative in Jakarta, Indonesia

The JLN’s new Digital Health Collaborative held its first in-person convening in Jakarta, Indonesia, from November 8  through 10, 2023. Member countries of the Digital Health Collaborative are Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Senegal. The key objectives of this inaugural convening of the JLN Digital Health Collaborative included;

• launching the new Collaborative,
• scoping and prioritizing the learning agenda with the members of the Collaborative and
• initiating knowledge co-production by the Collaborative.

The Collaborative launch was co-located with the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) General Meetings to allow JLN participants to join AeHIN General Meetings (from November 6-8, 2023). Twenty-nine (29) representatives from 14 out of 15 Collaborative member countries attended the meetings in person. The Digital Health Collaborative Launch meeting was kick-started by a site visit to the headquarters of Indonesia’s Social Health Insurance Agency, BPJS-Health, on November 8, followed by scoping discussions on November 9 and 10.

The BPJS-Health site visit commenced with opening remarks from Dr. Ali Ghufron Mukti, President Director of BPJS-Health, followed by a presentation by Dr. Donni Hendrawan, Deputy Director of Data and Information Management. The presentation highlighted key steps in the digital transformation journey at BPJS-Health, going from a graphical user interface desktop application in the early 2000s to a more robust digital ecosystem. The presentation was followed by a visit to the command center, where Collaborative members witnessed the different analytical dashboards used by BPJS. These include live data dashboards for problematic equipment at facilities, claims, population coverage, region-level service profile, and facility and region-level ICD-10 diagnosis rates. BPJS-Health press release featured the JLN site visit, which attracted comprehensive media coverage. 

The two days of the plenary meeting included sessions that covered scoping discussions and prioritization of technical priorities, a presentation on existing tools relevant to overall technical priorities, a country panel discussion of promising practices in digital health, and the next steps for knowledge products for the group. Key knowledge products that were agreed on for co-development by the group include:

1. A playbook/ how-to guide all levels of interoperability in health systems, including Health Information Exchange
2. A guide on private sector solutions: Public Private Partnerships
3. An orientation, evidence, and dialogue toolkit: How to pitch better and listen more
4. A how-to toolkit for digital health governance
5. An AI agent (GPT) for an annotated inventory of resources

Member countries will identify the next steps regarding priority knowledge products and relevant next steps in the new year 2024.

The World Bank provides technical facilitation for this Collaborative in partnership with the Digital Health Exemplars initiative, including the Center for Global Digital Health Innovation at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, eHealth Lab Ethiopia, the McKinsey Health Institute, Gates Ventures, and Exemplars in Global Health. Financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Umbrella Program, and the Government of Japan is gratefully acknowledged.