Many countries struggle to modernize their public health sectors owing to a lack of technical expertise in developing digital service delivery technologies. The use of such solutions can drastically improve efficiencies of public health interventions, while fostering accountability, and transparency.  

India's recent advancements in digital health, as well as vast implementation and programmatic experience, offer valuable insights and lessons that could be readily adapted and implemented elsewhere. The Government of India has repeatedly offered its digital health technologies as a digital public good to the world. Encouraged by this offer, the UN India SDG Fund, invited interested countries of the Global South to partner with Indian institutions to gain expertise and develop solutions for their respective local needs.  

Lao PDR and Zambia expressed interest in leveraging the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare owned solutions - eVIN and CoWIN. These platforms, developed with technical support from UNDP India, are key components of India’s digital health stack. eVIN is a digital platform, managing the vaccine supply chain of India’s immunization programme and is active around 30,000 cold chain points across the country. The platform has led to substantial reduction in vaccine stock outs and wastage.

CoWIN, is the technical backbone of India’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, which helped in administering over 2.2 billion vaccine doses in less than 2 years.    

India’s leadership, combined with UNDP’s facilitation, created a practical pathway for countries in the Global South to leverage Indian digital health expertise. The Ensuring Equitable Access to Healthcare Services through Digital Health Platforms project aims to build technical capacities, in Lao PDR and Zambia. Following are the salient features of the project:  

Key Outputs

1. Landscape Analysis: Conduct comprehensive assessments in Lao PDR and Zambia to evaluate current readiness for digitalization, including infrastructure, human resources and skill sets, and existing standard operating procedures (SOPs).

2. Capacity Building: Strengthen the capacity of health workers and program managers to effectively design, implement, and manage large-scale digital health solutions.

3. Proof of Concept (POCs): Develop and implement pilot digital health solutions that can be sustainably scaled by recipient countries through domestic financing mechanisms.

Expected Outcomes

1. Strengthened National Readiness for Digital Health Transformation: Governments are equipped with evidence-based insights and prioritized action plans to advance digital health adoption.

2. Enhanced Institutional and Workforce Capacity: Health systems demonstrate improved capability to implement, manage, and sustain digital health interventions at scale.

3. Demonstrated, Scalable Digital Health Solutions with Government Ownership: Validated POCs provide replicable models that are adopted and scaled by governments using domestic resources.