Overview
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and developed in partnership between PATH and Cooper/Smith, the Data Use Acceleration and Learning (DUAL) initiative is sharing what works, and what doesn’t to achieve digital transformation for data use. DUAL has collected and synthesized learnings from five countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania – that have been digitalizing their health systems and strengthening the use of health data to achieve better health outcomes. DUAL packaged these country experiences into a model that distills these learnings into practical, measurable recommendations of best practices for digital transformation.
The model’s key factors for success can be applied by countries at any stage in the process and will help to align financing, global policies, and future interventions.
For policymakers
The DUAL model gives policymakers clear guidance on how to develop policies and guidance in alignment with countries’ health targets and digital maturity.
For country governments
The DUAL model supports governments to integrate digital health initiatives with national strategies to transform their health systems.
For implementers
The DUAL model helps implementers optimize the impact of digital and data interventions in keeping with country health targets and national strategies.
For funders
The DUAL model provides an evidence-based framework for funders to better allocate resources and invest in country-defined programming.
A Collaborative Country Effort
The DUAL initiative reflects the cumulative inputs of five countries digitalizing their health systems and steady stakeholder engagement with implementers, policymakers, and other key digital health stakeholders to validate findings. Through a series of key informant interviews, country dialogues, online surveys, and webinars, DUAL developed a model that serves as a practical, comprehensive guide to advancing the use of data to achieve health equity. Countries with health systems at any stage of their digital transformation process can choose the actions that make sense for their digital health systems’ context.