The Federal Ministry of Health of Ethiopia and the Pan African Health Informatics Association (HELINA) co-hosted a roundtable consultative meeting on the impact of digital public infrastructure on Ethiopia's health system with representatives from donor headquarters.
The Ethiopia Federal Ministry of Health and the Pan African Health Informatics Association, HELINA, hosted an important round table consultative meeting on Friday 6th Dec 2024 with donor partner organizations to participate at the Global Digital Health Forum (GDHF 2024 - https://www.gdhf.digital/) in Nairobi Kenya. This meeting was co-facilitated by the Honorable State Minister Dr. Ayele Teshome and the HELINA President, Dr. Steven Wanyee and was part of a series of engagements that the Ministry is keen on using to ensure better alignment of donor investments to Ethiopia's digital health strategy. The Hon. Dr. Ayele reiterated the broad health sector reforms that his Ministry is spearheading and the critical central role of digital health in contributing to those reforms that will transform healthcare in Ethiopia. For this reason, he said that it is not just important and timely, but ethical and responsible for a more cohesive and harmonized Government led approach to digital health transformation to enable Ethiopia to maximize the return on these digital health investments. In acknowledging that indeed digital health is a political choice, the Hon. Dr. Ayele pledged to provide the required political leadership needed to ensure that as a collective of trusted partners, each organization is supported to effectively make its digital health development contribution within a Government-led collective accountability framework.
The Hon. Dr. Ayele Teshome was deeply appreciative of the partners and Representatives who attended this important meeting from AfricaCDC, The WHO, The World Bank Group, UNICEF, Global Fund, USAID, and GIZ Headquarters. In attendance, Grahame Grieve, the creator of FHIR representing HL7. All the partners acknowledged the alignment of their support to Ethiopia's national digital health strategy and areas prioritized by the FMOH and pledged to further deepen their technical assistance through modern approaches such as the fullSTAC (open Standards, open Technology, open Architecture, and open Content) for ensuring sustainability and technology independence. Speaking in a unified voice, the donor organizations appreciated Ethiopia's clear articulation of its digital health priorities and roadmap and committed to providing technical and financial support in a coordinated and aligned manner to amplify the impact of their support in the digital transformation for the health agenda led by the FMOH.
The Hon. Dr. Ayele thanked the Pan African Health Informatics Association represented by Dr. Steven Wanyee and the Executive Director, Dr. Emma Waiyaiya for coordinating a highly successful meeting. He promised to personally take lead in supporting strengthening the professional association of health informatics in Ethiopia to particularly to support the transformation of the in-service and pre-service health informatics workforce capacity in Ethiopia. He noted the critical importance of expeditiously developing a skilled and competent workforce that will ensure effective and sustainable implementation and utilization of digital interventions, services, and applications in Ethiopia's health sector ecosystem. He appreciated the central role of the health Digital Public Infrastructure for health and the need for a paradigm shift from system thinking to ecosystem thinking by investing in standards-based digital health technologies and pledged his support for the fullSTAC approach in Ethiopia. This invaluable guidance from the Honorable Minister was further articulated by Mr. Tewdros Kersie, Head of the Digital Health System Governance Desk in the Digital Health Lead Executive Office when he highlighted the high-impact key priority Initiatives in the National Digital Health Blueprint strategy that includes the establishment of and enhancement of the Digital Public Infrastructure for health, adoption of standards and enablement of interoperability, adoption and scaling of health tech digital technologies and Strengthening the digital health leadership & governance to ensure that the implementation of these technologies have significant impact to country’s health system.
In closing, the Hon. Dr. Ayele Teshome restated that Ethiopia is taking a whole of Government approach to achieve effective and meaningful digital health transformation and he asked all the partners present to subscribe to a similar model of an all-of-partner approach to complement the Government efforts that will enable a higher return of the collective digital health investments.
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