Integrating Digital Health Services: An Open Platform Approach for Resource-Constrained Countries

Abstract

Better health enables greater wealth. And digital health enables better healthcare. Also across resource-constraint countries digital health applications are becoming more prevalent. To establish a resilient national or district Digital Health Ecosystem, not only a holistic strategy – based on health policy priorities – is mandatory, but it must also be followed by a realistic roadmap and its comprehensive implementation,taking into account the success factors needed for its long-term sustainability and growth.A key challenge in this context is that deployed eHealth systems are usually in silos, such that no system or application is integrated with another. It is the missing interoperability of the many siloed systems which constitutes a core barrier towards reaping greater benefits from digital health. To successfully transform the provision of quality healthcare services it is mandatory to put into place an open digital health platform that comprehensively integrates eHealth services across all healthcare facilities in a timely, efficient and seamless manner. The open platform concept and its technical approach are developed, and core elements and aspects are critically explored. A constituent complement of such an open approach is a detailed interoperability framework which must be adhered to by all services and applications coordinated via the platform. The key question in this context of how to determine interoperability requirements is briefly discussed. This is complemented by identifying leading open source eHealth software products available and being applied in emerging market and developing economies around the world.Digital health is different from almost any other sector. By identifying the challenges encountered in healthcare the discussion reviews how the open platform approach helps to overcome these barriers, and identifies important pitfalls to be avoided.