WASHINGTON, (CMC) – Jamaica and Guyana have called for the digitalisation of the health sector in the Americas as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) celebrated five years of collaboration in information systems and digital health.

PAHO and the IDB Monday marked the occasion with the theme “Connecting Health for All,” underscoring the crucial role of digital transformation in pandemic recovery and improving access to health.

Jamaica’s Health and Wellness Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, speaking at the event said “For Jamaica, the digital transformation project has led to shorter wait times, reduced cost in providing health services and greater efficiency.

“The digitalisation of health in the Americas has never been more important as it is urgent,” he added.

His Guyana counterpart, Dr Frank Anthony, said “Investing in connected health, presents an opportunity to achieve universal health coverage and to provide health for all.

“We urge partners to prioritise digitisation of health as a development platform,” Anthony continued.

PAHO Director, Dr Jarbas Barbosa, highlighted the urgent need to ensure that countries have the data and information necessary to monitor progress towards universal health, identify gaps and ensure that everyone in the Americas can exercise their right to health.

“The alliance between PAHO and the IDB is crucial because it focuses on problems highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

“During the early stages of the pandemic, there were countries of the Americas that were unable to see how many COVID-19 cases they had each day because their information systems were too weak,” he added.

Barbosa said that even now, “it is unacceptable that some countries in our region do not even know their maternal mortality rate”.

To tackle these issues, the PAHO/IDB partnership has developed over 40 strategic actions to ensure the digital transformation of the health sector and three regional policies: a Plan of Action for the Strengthening of Information Systems for Health; a regional Roadmap for the Digital Transformation of the Health Sector and a policy on the application of data science in public health using artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

Barbosa said, “Most importantly, the partnership has led to more people receiving digital health services”.

Digital transformation, which includes investing in services such as health information systems, telemedicine, and electronic prescriptions, as well as other digital innovations in medicine such as artificial intelligence, is crucial to ensuring a renewed vision of primary health care.

IDB president, Ilan Goldfajn said the population of the Americas wants better public services and health is one of them.

“The agenda we are building together has elements of what we believe are priorities,” he said, including regional integration, data, efficiency, digitalisation and addressing inequality.

The PAHO/IDB partnership has resulted in more than 15 countries of the Americas having improved digital health foundations, and 10 countries have digital health agendas with infrastructure ready for data sharing across borders.