Thirteen countries have launched a new global partnership aimed at improving the use of digital technologies in healthcare, such as United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
The Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP), officially launched at a summit in Canberra last month, will allow member nations to share evidence, policies, and best practices to enhance digital health services worldwide.
The participating countries are Austria, Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The initiative’s main goal is to address common challenges in modern healthcare and create a framework for collaboration among governments, digital health agencies, and organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO).
Australia’s Digital Health Agency played a key role in organising the summit, and its Chief Executive, Tim Kelsey, highlighted the importance of mutual learning. According to Kelsey, the partnership offers countries the opportunity to exchange strategies and experiences to improve the effectiveness of their healthcare systems.
“Australia and its international partners can learn from each other and share information about what has worked in their health settings… The partnership will help deliver actionable policy and programme outcomes to both domestic and international agendas,” Kelsey explained.
One key aspect of the GDHP will be co-producing guidelines for digital health services that consider the needs of not only governments but also innovators, industries, clinicians, and the community.
Kelsey emphasised the importance of an inclusive approach: “It is important that guidelines created by governments and other agencies are co-produced with the needs of innovators, industries, clinicians and the community.”
The GDHP will focus on several critical areas to improve digital health over the next year: connected and interoperable healthcare, cybersecurity, and digital health evaluation. The goal is to ensure that healthcare systems can work more efficiently across borders while safeguarding patient data and evaluating the impact of digital tools on health outcomes.
The global push for digital healthcare comes amid significant investment in health IT and digital health innovations. Funding for digital health venture capital exceeded $5 billion in 2016, and this financial backing is helping to drive the development of new digital tools aimed at improving patient care, reducing costs, and increasing access to healthcare services.
Several countries will work together to align their efforts in funding and implementing digital health innovations that can be scaled across different healthcare systems as part of the GDHP.
The participating countries are taking a step towards a more integrated global healthcare system with the GDHP. The partnership’s focus on sharing policy and evidence is expected to lead to better outcomes for patients worldwide.