Delhi: Global conference on digital health to begin today

New Delhi [India], March 20 : Leveraging India's G20 presidency, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in association with the World Health Orgzation (WHO) South-East Asia Regional office is orgzing a two-day Global Conference on Digital Health - 'Taking Universal Health Coverage to the last citizen' on March 20-21 in New Delhi.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will preside over the conference.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the conclave will bring together global leaders and health development partners, health policymakers, digital health innovators and influencers, academia and other stakeholders.

The objective of the Global Conference on Digital Health is to shift the focus from strategy to achieving a global consensus on a Plan of Action that produces impactful results on the ground in the member countries, through a set of digital health initiatives aiming to accelerate the progress towards universal health coverage, said the Union Health Ministry statement.

The Global Conference will address the issues to accelerate the implementation of connected digital health initiatives and interventions as a cornerstone of building PHC-oriented and resilient health systems. It will also focus on unlocking the potential of delivering and sharing digital health solutions in an ethical, safe, secure, reliable, equitable and sustainable way, the statement said.

The conference will also focus on to finding ways to invest, develop and share digital technologies following principles of transparency, accessibility, scalability, replicability, interoperability, privacy, security, and confidentiality. This will help in establishing strategic enablers and technology enablers required for implementing digital health at population scale.

The statement further said the conference will also have a ministerial session involving brainstorming on insight and experience on the digital transformation challenges, opportunities and critical success factors along with panel discussions.