Ministry of Health and National Governments

Characteristics and Strengths

• Set national health priorities and design large-scale national public health programs
• Lead health sector reform agenda
• Guide the production, recruitment, and deployment of human resource for health, including community health workforce
• Regulate both public and private health service providers
• Set development cooperation policies and priorities in the health sector
• Provide financial resources to sub-national governments
• Work closely with other ministries and sub-national governments to execute national health policies
• Compete with other ministries and government line agencies for resources
• Have access to large-scale funding from multilateral and bilateral international agencies
• Have an appreciation for the role of digital technology in healthcare
• May have developed and rolled-out national digital health strategy
• Responsible for setting digital technology and data standards
• Often have an institutional home to anchor national digital health programs
• May have some in-house capacity to deploy and implement digital health tools
• Are often looking to establish partnerships for leveraging digital health technologies
• Are leveraging data and data science to innovate on new approaches to achieving desired health outcomes
• Have access to health systems data from the deployment of a new model of care
• May have already invested significantly in proprietary locked-in software

Values

• Safeguarding the health rights of the citizens
• International commitments in health, e.g. UHC, SDG, etc.
• National ownership of public health programs
• National capacities to govern and manage community health programs
• Cost-effectiveness
• Government adoption and sustainability

Needs

• Health systems strengthening support to keep up with growing population needs and tackle emerging public health challenges, e.g. NCDs
• Regular political commitments for increased spending in public health
• Integration and interoperability of digital health technologies
• Better data systems for evidence-based planning and monitoring
• Capacity and resources to govern and manage digital health programs
• HCD and data science capabilities