The Malian government has published its strategic plan for national digital health 2024 – 2028, aiming to “improve accessibility, quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of national health systems”.
Focusing on “seamless connectivity”, “continuous access to health information”, enhancing coverage in remote or rural areas, and strengthening emergence response, the plan highlights that despite advances in health tech over the last 15 years, the level of maturity and interoperability is estimated to be at an “emerging” level rather than optimised.
Referring to the creation of a National Agency for Telehealth and Medical Informatics as “a translation into concrete action of the will of the late President of the Republic”, the plan outlines the goals of supporting access to primary and specialist healthcare, and supporting capacity building for health professionals.
The government sets out a series of sub-projects needing to be completed in order to achieve these goals, including the development of the secure health messaging system and the System Interoperability Framework Health Information System (CI-SIS), and a community IS which will be the first of these projects to launch.
Strategic actions include strengthening governance and leadership for digital health, ensuring communication on proposed digital interventions “at all levels of the health pyramid”, and monitoring and evaluating digital health implementation activities.
Specific actions in this regard include the creation of a national digital health coordination platform, holding regular meetings with the management bodies of “various thematic groups in digital health”, organising awareness and social mobilisation campaigns for digital health activities, and organising reviews on the implementation of digital health activities.
Strengthening the legal and institutional framework for digital health is another key factor the plan tackles, with objectives to improve legislation and compliance frameworks/standards, organise ethics in digital health workshops, and draw up draft regulatory and legislative texts for telemedicine and interoperability of SIS in Mali.
On infrastructure, the plan notes the importance of strengthening the agency’s capacity to support digital health, constructing a headquarters, setting up a data centre, maintaining digital equipment/tools, and establishing integrated digital platforms.
For the workforce specifically, the plan sets out objectives around strengthening digital skills, integrating digital into the training of health professionals, updating organisational profiles with digital competencies, and integrating digital health “into the performance contract at the level of health structures”.
To read the strategic plan for national digital health 2024 – 2028 in full, please click here.
In related news, seven new healthcare projects have been announced under the Korean ARPA-H Initiative, with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute sharing details and issuing a call for research and development proposals to help implement them.
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