Information and Communication Technologies for Health Systems Strengthening : Opportunities, Criteria for Success, and Innovation for Africa and Beyond
Information and communication technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by strengthening five critical pillars of a health system: human resources for health, supply chain managemen...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/01/24141334/information-communication-technologies-health-systems-strengthening-opportunities-criteria-success-innovation-africa-beyond http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21710 |
| Summary: | Information and communication
technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold
great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by
strengthening five critical pillars of a health system:
human resources for health, supply chain management, health
care financing, governance and service delivery, and
infrastructure. This report describes the changing landscape
of eHealth initiatives through these five pillars, with a
geographic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This report further
details seven criteria, or prerequisites, that must be
considered and addressed in order to effectively establish
and scale up ICT-based solutions in the health sector. These
criteria include infrastructure, data and interoperability
standards, local capacity, policy and regulatory
environments, an appropriate business model, alignment of
partnerships and priorities, and monitoring and evaluation.
In order to bring specific examples of these criteria to
light, this report concludes with 12 specific case studies
of potentially scalable ICT-based health care solutions
currently being implemented across the globe at community,
national, and regional levels. This report is intended to be
used by development practitioners, including task team
leaders at the World Bank, to strengthen their understanding
of the use of ICT to support health systems strengthening
(HSS) efforts as well as to highlight critical prerequisites
needed to optimize the benefits of ICT for health. |
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