Digital Square is a global mechanism that coordinates investments into smart, scalable health technology solutions and creates an environment in which they can be sustained. A historic lack of coordination in digital health has resulted in an imbalanced, disorganized marketplace where available tools and investment mechanisms do not match the long-term needs of countries or communities. To accelerate health equity through the development, adoption, scale, and delivery of digital health innovations, Digital Square focuses on creating better alignment and coordination. Digital Square brings partners together to improve how the global community designs, uses, and pays for digital health tools and approaches. Digital Square works with innovators to advance adaptable, replicable tools that are designed to work together seamlessly.
MISSION
Strong digital health systems provide governments and decision-makers with the information they need, when they need it to ensure better health outcomes for all. Digital Square aims to strengthen the country's efforts to develop national digital health infrastructure. We ensure these efforts are supported by coordinated investments and a selection of high-quality digital health tools.
OBJECTIVES:
•Objective 1: Alignment and Co-investment: Digital Square helps to identify promising investment opportunities and provides operational support to streamline procurement.
•Objective 2: Global goods: Digital Square promotes the development, adoption, and reuse of global goods and helps increase their availability, adaptability, and maturity.
•Objective 3: Regional and Country Systems: Digital Square helps elevate country priorities and strengthen regional and national capacity.
OPPORTUNITIES: Strengthening healthcare service delivery through sustainable, harmonized, and interoperable digital health solutions has been identified as one of the key strategic outcomes of Tanzania's Health Sector Strategic Plan V (2021 – 2026). Tanzania has made significant progress in digital health. However, inefficient health information data exchange, siloed and disease specific digital tools and uncoordinated digital health, and linkage of community-based service to health care are remaining challenges. USAID, through Digital Square, supports the Ministry of Health to address the remaining challenges by strengthening digital health governance and enhancing existing digital systems to address government priorities.
• Support design, implementation and scaleup of digital health solutions for HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Maternal child health programs. DSQ is supporting expansion and scaleup of the Unified Community System (OpenSRP), with community-based HIV/AIDS, Malaria Community Case Management, and Reproductive and Child Health functionalities. The UCS is deployed in 10 regions of mainland with over 10,000 clients registered and accounted for community HIV/AID services.
• Harmonized and interoperable digital health systems. DSQ is supporting development and deployment of the Tanzania Health Interoperability Layer (HIM) whereby over 31 different health systems exchange data on over 120 different use cases.
• Support digital health governance for coordinated and harmonized digital health investments. DSQ is supporting the development and implementation of health enterprise architecture in Zanzibar and operationalization of HIS partner coordination group in Mainland. DSQ is actively supporting the UCS governance committee to ensure coordinated USC deployment.
• COVID 19 pandemic Response. DSQ has developed and deployed an enhanced Chanjo COVID system with offline capabilities to support COVID-19 vaccination data management. The system has been deployed and used across Tanzania's mainland regions.
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