Empowerment through Digital Health

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted an urgent need for effective digital tools and an unprecedented rush to implement eHealth services, including telemedicine consultation and digital contact tracing, in countries across the Region. This is most welcome,  but there are risks involved, for example, in terms of human aspects of care and undermining of fundamental rights. The adoption of interoperable digital technologies for clinical and public health decision-making struggles to overcome technical and political hurdles. This flagship initiative complements initiatives from various countries and partner institutions by providing technical and policy guidance and expertise on the safety and efficacy of digital health solutions; and preserving health equity, gender equality, equity and human rights as core values in their deployment.

The Empowerment through Digital Health initiative will undertake the following steps.

• Review the use, gaps and efficacy of digital health solutions deployed in  response to the COVID-19 crisis.
• Finalize the European Roadmap for Digitalization of Health Systems as a blueprint for the design of digital health and social care architectures; as a baseline for orienting and measuring digital health system investment  and reform; and as a catalyst for funding, research and partner engagement for digital health.
• Develop a European health data governance framework through a European Health Data Governance Charter that outlines a set of European values,  principles and methods for health data access, management, governance and use for effective health systems and public health action. It will galvanize  existing efforts to protect the data rights and privacy of individuals and  provide a description of the elements and processes constituting good data governance as an integral part of well-functioning national health information systems. The framework will support the use of quality health data for decisionmaking at all levels of the health system, strengthen public health forecasting  and action, and facilitate secondary uses of health data for research and the development of new clinical interventions.
• Support countries to leverage the use of digital technologies to improve the interface between people and health services; improve health system performance; and strengthen critical public health functions including disease surveillance, early warning and risk assessment.

This flagship initiative complements and operationalizes the draft WHO Global  Strategy on Digital Health, filling gaps in the overarching digitalization frameworks in  the Region that are holding up rapid roll-out of the innovative digital solutions that are emerging across countries.