JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The World Health Organization (WHO) published the Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020-2025 (GSDH) to guide member countries in defining their digital health strategies (DHSs).

Objective:

The study investigates the alignment of the country-specific strategies of Germany and Tanzania with the GSDH and to what extent emerging technologies are included by analyzing relevant documents and comparing their policies.

Methods:

Our methodology is based on a document analysis and comparative policy analysis approach. The main sources were national eHealth policy documents and technology and health policy documents.

Results:

Tanzania published its DHS one year before the WHO GSDH was released, while Germany published its first National Digitalization Strategy in March 2023. Due to the temporary overlap with the publication of the strategy, this study refers to the status quo prior to its publication. Germany perused the approach to publish individual parts of its overall DHS strategy over several years. Germany used federal legislation to create a comprehensive legal framework tailored to the healthcare system. However, without binding goals and guidelines. Tanzania’s DHS addresses unresolved transformation challenges and the best use of digital technologies to improve health service delivery.

Conclusions:

The DHSs of Germany and Tanzania are largely aligned with the GSDH, but both fail to cover certain aspects, while including other country-specific elements not covered by the GSDH, which are aligned with their own national health priorities. We recommend the development of guidelines and a tool for the assessment of national digital health strategies and their consistency with the WHO’s Global Strategy on Digital Health to promote such comparisons.