Scope
This digital and scientific transformation will improve health outcomes by supporting access to quality health services, strengthening information systems and integration across existing surveillance systems, and addressing public health priorities. It envisions a robust global evidence ecosystem that empowers governments, professionals, and civil society members to make well-informed decisions for a better future. PAHO will work to build capacity in the scientific ecosystem by facilitating greater integration of the research, ethics, evidence, and knowledge systems, fostering quality, translation, and impact, safeguarding integrity, and building trust in science. Specifically, the following actions will be implemented:
- Promote digital transformation to increase the efficiency, accessibility, and quality of health services and public health initiatives and bridge the digital divide. Ensuring that systems are resilient to health emergencies by fostering bandwidth, connectivity, digital literacy, innovation, and strong governance. Support appropriate and responsible use of AI, big data, and digital public goods through partnerships that ensure access for all and better public health outcomes.
- Strengthen information systems for health to support data-driven decisions, improve surveillance, and monitor health goals. Focus on secure interoperable systems such as electronic health records and related platforms to improve the coordination of care, safety, and patient outcomes, adhering to regional and global privacy and cybersecurity standards.
- Strengthen health analysis by leveraging real-time data, predictive modeling, and geospatial information systems to inform decision-making and optimize public health interventions. Increase the production and use of quality disaggregated data to generate health intelligence and monitor health inequalities. Build capacity to utilize health intelligence for impactful communication and policy action.
- Harness the power of science to advance health by strengthening research and knowledge systems, fostering trust in science, and leveraging innovation and emerging technologies to produce and share knowledge and promote access for all to scientific information.
- Ensure that health action is grounded in evidence by institutionalizing evidence and ethics in health decision-making for policy and practice and establishing mechanisms to rigorously assess evidence and transparently engage with values.
Key Interventions
Build capacity to develop and implement national digital health roadmaps and interoperable health data platforms guided by maturity assessments of information systems for health, ensuring robust governance, data integration, privacy, and security, including necessary laws and multisectoral policies, to help bridge the digital divide, strengthen evidence-informed decision-making, and improve health outcomes.
Leverage digital health innovations to empower individuals, communities, and health workers with enhanced decision-making capabilities in health-related contexts.
Adopt strategies for the application of data science in public health using artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and develop predictive analytics tools, incorporating geospatial solutions, to implement health disparity monitoring and analysis.
Enhance public health intelligence by building capacity to collect, analyze, disseminate, and use disaggregated data to monitor progress toward national and regional health goals, including the strengthening of the regional Health in the Americas and Core Indicators initiatives.
Strengthen country capacities for the systematic and transparent uptake of evidence to inform policy- and decision-making by establishing dedicated knowledge translation platforms and implementing standardized evidence mechanisms derived from regional and global science, local data, and specific contextual knowledge.
Enhance governance and stewardship of research, science, and innovation for health, including priority setting and financial investments in health research, and strengthen health research systems to drive innovation by integrating human genomics, improving the quality and coordination of clinical trials, and advancing horizon scanning, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics.
Assess research ethics systems, provide technical assistance for the development of a framework to ensure that research meets ethical standards, establish effective mechanisms for ethics oversight, and strengthen capacities for ethics analysis and ethical decision-making in public health.
Enhance the availability and use of multilingual scientific and technical literature to ensure access to information and knowledge for all and leverage PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centers at regional and global levels to support the strengthening of resources in information, services, research, and capacity-building.