From Today to Tomorrow: Leveraging Digital Health to Move toward Health for All

Abstract

This series of papers explores the concept of essential digital health for the underserved. Several cross-cutting themes are highlighted in this paper, for example: (1) harmonizing journeys of different patient groups to understand diverse perspectives; (2) engaging health professionals in interoperability, change management and health human resource capacity building; (3) ensuring harmonization of micro, meso and macro levels of health services delivery; and (4) integrating evaluation iteratively to enable continuous improvement and learning. Adopting a learning health system (LHS) approach facilitates iterative growth and evolution, incorporating concepts from the software industry, as well as participatory processes such as failing forward, developing ecosystems for collaboration and engagement of stakeholders. The example of HealthLink BC's 811 as a digital front door is used to demonstrate how an LHS approach can enable meaningful system change. We welcome further dialogues and discussion on existing and emerging examples of health system implementation approaches that can help our Canadian health systems move continuously and progressively closer toward the ultimate goal of Health for All (WHO 2023).