During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, countries were inundated with untested digital health solutions, which were developed without standards and did not last.
“There was no coordinated global goods approach,” said Dykki Settle, chief digital officer at PATH, an NGO focused on global health innovation. Settle is involved in a range of projects related to digital health and said the field has made a lot of progress over the past five years. “We were so fragmented and so uncoordinated we really almost caused challenges more than we supported them.”
That led to the launch of Digital Square, which brings partners together to improve the design, use, and funding of digital health tools and approaches. The goal is to create “a thriving marketplace for digital health.” Now led by PATH, the initiative was initially founded and designed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.