At the Global Ministerial Forum on Research and Health in Mali on Tuesday, South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu presented a document calling for global action on health IT, Digital HealthCare & Productivity reports.
The document was developed at a series of Rockefeller Foundation conferences held last summer in Bellagio, Italy. It was signed by more than 100 representatives of health care organizations, health IT vendors, national governments, universities, industry groups and charitable foundations.
The document states, "To achieve substantial progress on improving health quality, access, affordability and efficiency, nations must share and work toward a global e-health vision."
The action statement calls for technologies that are:
- Collaborative;
- Interoperable;
- Need-driven;
- Person-centered;
- Reusable;
- Scalable;
- Standards-based;
- Sustainable; and
- Owned by in-country organizations.
The signatories also called for technologies that promote health and disease prevention and urged interoperability based on open standards (Versel, Digital HealthCare & Productivity, 11/18).