Digital Health

Investments in digital health maximize the impact of every dollar invested to end AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. These investments make entire health systems more robust and efficient by improving data use, clinical decisions, diagnostics, disease surveillance, information sharing, remote monitoring and health worker reach and performance.

The digital health tools and initiatives that the Global Fund supports – including digital tools for community health workers, digitizing health data, enhancing supply chains and enabling digital payments – are vital to maximize outcomes in the fight against HIV, TB and malaria and strengthen the health system as a whole.

In low‑ and middle‑income countries that must achieve health outcomes with limited workforce capacity and severely constrained budgets, the rapid advancements in digital and artificial intelligence (AI) enable reimagining health care delivery. Scaling AI to meet the needs of these countries requires a shared commitment to digital infrastructure foundations and thoughtful utilization of AI solutions driven by evidence, aligned with national priorities, and focused on equitable access to services.

The Global Fund is one of the largest investors in digital health in low- and middle-income countries, investing approximately US$150 million a year in digital tools in over 90 countries. With our partners, we support digital health foundations and transformation to harness the full potential of digital and AI technologies to ensure universal access to quality care.

Over the last two decades, we have invested in health management information systems in over 90 countries. These are critical digital health tools for organizing, analyzing and using health-related data to improve health care delivery and management. As the result of Global Fund investments, most of the countries where we invest now report on local-level health services digitally, streamlining operations, improving patient care and informing programmatic prioritization.

We also support countries to integrate and share digital health data from the community to the national level, across disease programs, and across health care services. The exchange of this data is essential to inform patient care, program decision making, and global health security. For example, our investments support the digitization and integration of disease surveillance and early alert systems in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before, there would often be 2- to 3-week long delays in disease surveillance data feedback. Now, data on potential disease outbreaks is being transmitted with the click of a button.

Digital innovations and technologies can help ensure that health advancements can reach all affected communities wherever they are, leaving no one behind. We invest in digital health to support community health workers to reach people in the most remote locations. Mobile phone applications designed for community health workers are enabling providers to deliver robust health services to more people – including testing, treatment and referral services. These platforms also improve health data collection, help prevent stockouts of medicines and medical supplies, reduce community health worker workload, and improve efficiency.

Countries scale and sustain proven, high-impact technological advancements, even leapfrogging where possible, by leveraging the Global Fund partnership and mechanisms. For example, AI is rapidly improving the ability to detect TB in people and places that conventional health systems often fail to reach. With AI-powered software that analyzes digital chest X-rays, health workers can quickly identify people with TB. Mounted on mobile vans, these tools are bringing lifesaving care directly to underserved communities – prisoners, refugees, poor rural communities and the socially marginalized – helping reach people with the disease who have long been missed by health systems.