17 December 2019, Cairo – For the first time in the Region, a stakeholder workshop to develop a national digital health strategy was held in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 26–27 September 2019. As a result of the workshop, participants drafted a vision and mission for digital health, proposed priority digital health applications in the areas of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, reproductive, maternal, neonatal and adolescent health, emergencies and health care delivery, developed a draft action plan for 2020–2021 and proposed monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for the assessment of progress in the proposed digital health strategy action plan.

The objectives of the workshop were to establish a national digital health vision, develop a plan of action on digital health and propose indicators for monitoring and evaluation. During the workshop, the modules of a WHO/ITU toolkit on the development of a national digital health strategy were introduced and followed by detailed discussion. As a result of the workshop, participants drafted a vision and mission for digital health, proposed priority digital health applications in the areas of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, reproductive, maternal, neonatal and adolescent health, emergencies and health care delivery, developed a draft action plan for 2020–2021 and proposed monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for the assessment of progress in the proposed digital health strategy action plan.

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr Palitha Mahipala, WHO Representative in Pakistan, with opening remarks given by Dr Sayed Jaffar Hussain, WHO Chef De Cabinet and Dr Samra Mazhar representing the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination. Participants were drawn from the public and private health sectors at the national and provincial level, and included representatives from the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ministry of Planning and Reform, Ministry of Science and Technology, research institutes, national and international nongovernmental organizations, academia, and UN agencies such as WHO, UNICEF and IOM.

The workshop was a collaboration between WHO and the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination and was the first national stakeholder workshop on digital health. It follows on from two regional capacity-building workshops for developing national eHealth strategies that were held in Cairo in December 2017 and Beirut in November 2018, attended by 21 countries, and advances WHO's regional strategic vision to harness the power of science and innovation for health.