2 February 2018, Cairo – The first regional capacity-building workshop on the development of national eHealth strategies was conducted during 25–27 December 2017 in coordination with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) guided by the WHO/ITU National eHealth Strategy Toolkit. Participants included 24 national/WHO country office eHealth focal points from 15 countries.
eHealth is changing health care delivery today and is at the core of responsive health systems. Developing and implementing a national eHealth strategy gives the evidence base for cost-effective health investments in a country. Without a strategy, decisions at different levels could pursue conflicting priorities. WHO and ITU have developed a toolkit for assisting countries to develop their own national eHealth strategies. The WHO Regional Office has conducted the above workshop aiming at building capacity of national and country office eHealth focal for stepwise development of national eHealth strategy, including developing a national eHealth vision, work-plan, monitoring and evaluation criteria and indicators, taking into account local socio-economic, cultural and possible emergency contexts.
Dr Arash Rashidian, Director, Information, Evidence, and Research, inaugurated the workshop that was facilitated by 5 eHealth experts (2 WHO, 2 ITU and one external facilitator). Participants from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom were in attendance. In addition to the WHO/ITU toolkit content, and aiming to foster integration and partnership, the workshop included presentations on UNRWA (Dr Yousef Shahin, Chief, Disease Prevention and Control; Ms Ghada Ballout, e-health Coordinator); strategy for emergency readiness (Dr Dalia Samhouri, Manager, WHO Country Preparedness and International Health Regulations); health economics (Dr Awad Mataria, Regional Advisor, Health Economics and Financing).
At the end of the workshop, participants were able to identify national eHealth context of their countries relevant to building a national eHealth strategy. This qualifies them to participate in building the case for development and implementing their countries’ national eHealth strategies.
