Digital Government Health and Aged Care

GDHP’s Four White Papers share countries’ digital health information

Aiza Mabayag Sep 4, 2020

2 min read

The Global Digital Health Partnership’s Four White Papers have revealed its member countries’ best methods to deliver digital health services and improve patient health outcomes.

GDHP Secretariat Lead Lav Agarwal said the Four White Papers will provide countries with enough guidance on the key digital health enablers, leading to improvements in the health and well-being of citizens with the best use of evidence-based digital technologies.

“Sharing digital health information is now more important than ever as individual nations and the global community respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Secretariat Lead Agarwal said.

The GDHP Four White Papers are the following:

Advancing Interoperability Together Globally
Citizen Access to Digital Health
Benefits Realisation: Sharing insights
Foundational Capabilities Framework & Assessment

The four reports provide insights, guidance and information on cutting edge digital innovation for digital health workers, governments, and organisations that provide digital health services to the communities they serve.

The reports are also a valuable source of information as they showed international comparisons of the country’s digital health systems with other countries.

One key trend found in the GDHP members’ digital health systems is the effort to empower citizens to have greater involvement in the management of their own healthcare.

This was shown in Australia when consumers uploaded and viewed more of their My Health Record documents.

Digital Health Agency’s Chief Medical Adviser and GDHP’s Chair of the Evidence and Evaluation workstream Meredith Makeham said the Digital Health Agency supported and led the development of the White Papers over the past year, working with more than 30 countries.

“Many countries and territories are still at the beginning of their digital health journey, so providing insights in key areas of common interest through our GDHP participation is fundamentally beneficial and supports our goals to improve health and well-being for people,” said Chief Medical Adviser and Chair Makeham.

“Our experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the importance of international engagement, and the critical role that digital health technologies play in ensuring that people have access to their healthcare providers and services. Digital health has never been more important.”