India’s G20 Presidency calls for integrated action in three priority areas–health emergencies prevention, preparedness, and response; strengthening cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector; and digital health innovations and solutions for universal health coverage and improved health care service delivery.
PATH supports the presidency’s agenda and is contributing to these G20 objectives.
No single country or entity can achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) on its own. Achieving UHC will require collaboration, partnership, and major paradigm shifts. PATH is partnering with several organizations to convene thought leaders and experts to discuss the G20 health priorities and create actionable recommendations that can transform health care.
Read about our G20 side meetings below. Please contact pathg20@path.org with any questions.
Department of Pharmaceuticals, CEPI, and PATH held a day-long convening in Hyderabad on June 3. The convening aimed at building a consensus among various stakeholders engaged in vaccine research, regulation, development, and manufacturing in G20 Member States as well as the special invitee countries for a Global Vaccine Research Collaborative. The convening was designed to support deliberations during the 3rd G20 Health Working Group (HWG) side conference meeting of India’s G20 Presidency, scheduled from June 4th-6th, 2023, in Hyderabad, India. Attendees at this convening included representatives of governments, academic and research organizations, multilateral and bilateral agencies, international organizations, and pharmaceutical and biotechnical companies, among others. The inaugural session featured keynote addresses by global and Indian thought leaders and lay the ground for three moderator-driven panel discussions, which explored key aspects of vaccine research and collaboration (including interventions by countries and international organizations).
PATH was invited to attend the 2nd Health Working Group meeting in Goa from April 17-19. PATH and Digital Square conducted a co-branded meeting with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare on April 20 titled “Prioritizing digital health investments: Reinforcing the enabling environment and facilitating standards-based guidelines”. The meeting brought together donors, partners, and multilateral organizations to facilitate discussion on coordination, alignment, and commitment to supporting resourcing for the digital health ecosystem.
Organized under the aegis of the Think 20 engagements and to serve as a curtain-raiser to the second G20 Health Working Group (HWG) meeting, PATH, in partnership with Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Digital Square, organized a thought leadership event to discuss what it takes to develop ‘A Global Digital Health Framework for Connected Healthcare’ in New Delhi. The meeting brought together experts from government, academia, non-profit organizations, and private sector and facilitated discussions on accelerating digital health adoption, health data governance, and building capacity and collaboration. Two panel discussions on the global institutional framework for accelerating adoption of digital health and a framework for strengthening health data governance and capacities were held. The meeting saw participation from 120 delegates.
At the 4th HWG meeting, Dr. Nabeel Goheer made an intervention on Global Initiative on Digital Health.
Digital Global Commons can accelerate our efforts to attain SDGs. These goods have the potential to address critical needs of LMICs. No wonder, the UNSG’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation includes promotion of digital public goods.
This Initiative will help reduce fragmentation, enable interoperability, provide convergence, encourage standards-based approach, and ensure availability of quality-assured digital health solutions. It will help bridge the digital divide across countries and communities.
PATH congratulates India’s Presidency, WHO and G20 Members on the Launch of Global Initiative on Digital Health. The Hon’ble minister of Health & Family Welfare of India highlighted that collaboration is no more a choice but an imperative and we echo that sentiment.
Additionally, PATH and Digital Square are honoured and thankful to be the partners of choice of the Government of India and WHO. We remain committed to supporting the Initiative. To conclude, PATH would like to extend its support to Brazil during their upcoming G20 Presidency. Their role in operationalizing the GIDH will be crucial and PATH shall be pleased to partner.
At the 3rd HWG meeting, K G Venkateswaran made an intervention on envisaging a global R&D network for research in vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to enhance pandemic preparedness and response.
PATH, in collaboration with CEPI and the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Government of India, has been facilitating deliberations for a proposed Global Vaccine Research Collaborative:
(1) To encourage proactive, coordinated, and accelerated vaccine R&D with investment in preparatory research,
(2) To increase the knowledge base on how best to engage with affected communities, encourage vaccine uptake and explore innovative coordination and funding mechanisms, and
(3) To ensure that the principles of equitable access are included from the early clinical phases of R&D.
PATH would like to share two key points on a global R&D network for VTDs to enhance pandemic preparedness and response, for consideration –
One, a Global R&D Network built on principles of open knowledge is important to work towards making research information readily available, adopting a “Wikipedia” like approach and encouraging use of a digital platform for open sharing and access to information about VTD products that are in pipeline and are "fit-for-use".
Two, from the vaccine perspective, a global collaboration for vaccine R&D would be a strategic decision, not competing but complementing and contributing to existing initiatives, like the Pandemic Accord, WHO R&D Blueprint and Clinical Trials Charter, among others. A mechanism, such as the proposed Global Vaccine Research Collaborative, will serve as one of the pillars under the over-arching Medical Countermeasures platform. We foresee such an initiative will offer a flexible path to introduce new technology platforms or to expand the existing platforms to proactively accelerate vaccine research and development in routine and pandemic times.
At the 3rd HWG meeting, Nikolaj Gilbert made an intervention on digital health innovations and solutions to aid universal Health Coverage and improve healthcare service delivery.
The discussions around a Global Initiative on Digital Health, democratisation of technology, the commitment shown in the 1st & 2nd HWG and the followups are encouraging. A collaborative ‘One Health’ digital agenda for policy, strategy, governance, financing, and solutions is the way forward and at PATH we are committed to it.
As witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital plays an instrumental role in ensuring timely and quality service delivery at scale. Substantive planning, investments and creating a backbone of digital architecture will be needed to enable countries to garner the potential of digitally enabled healthcare service delivery. These should be optimized for universal health coverage, moving away from siloed ‘data entry’ based systems.
We acknowledge the role WHO is playing to get all stakeholders aligned on Digital Health and support the idea to co-create a global framework for digital health. WHO’s work with ‘standards’, ‘clearing house’ for DPGs, the Digital Health Atlas, Global Health Observatory and SMART Guidelines, alongside the recent launch of the Global Digital Health Monitor which aims to encourage better alignment among policy makers, development partners, and implementers in the digital health field, are testament to this approach.
The requirement of greater coordination among development partners that fund development and implementation of digital systems is well appreciated. The ‘Principles of Donor Alignment for Digital Health’ which were endorsed by majority of organisations, need to be followed in letter and spirit while making commitments.
Digital Square at PATH is a global initiative that shares this vision as it applies to health. Since 2016, Digital Square has focused on reorienting the global digital health community to better match digital health approaches to country needs—advancing interoperable digital health tools that are adaptable to different countries and contexts to help close the health equity gap.
We thank the Indian Presidency for including Digital Health as one of the agenda items in the Health Working Group discussions. At PATH, we are committed to working closely with all organizations on the overarching agenda of creating and operationalizing the Global Initiative on Digital Health.
At the 3rd HWG meeting, Jessica Milman made an intervention on strengthening cooperation in pharmaceutical sector with focus on access and availability to safe, effective, quality and affordable medical countermeasures.
PATH would like to share three key points for consideration for accelerating development and access to life saving vaccines within the Medical Countermeasures platform for better pandemic preparedness.
One, collaboration for vaccine R&D must focus more on information and technology sharing and co-creation rather than technology transfer - building trust, equity, and engaging the affected community from the outset.
Two, we endorse the proposal to reduce fragmentation and increase impact by bringing together and leveraging existing networks and, where needed, developing newer global and regional networks under a network of networks platform to accelerate development of “fit-for-use” vaccine candidates, with focus on enhancing capacities in low- and middle-income countries.
Three, the knowledge produced by vaccine R&D should be a global public good, and a digital and shared knowledge platform so created will allow cross-country and cross-regional collaboration between the public sector, private sector, academia, and health research funders with an aim to achieve effective representation, participation, and voice of experts across all vaccine R&D expertise, especially from low- and middle-income countries.
At the 2nd HWG meeting, Neeraj Jain made an intervention on global digital health.
The theme of India’s G20 presidency is Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' or the 'World is One Family'. The proposition of viewing core technology and infrastructure as ‘digital global commons’ is absolutely aligned with this philosophy. The idea that certain data, information and digital infrastructure is a shared resource which is co-created, open access, and allows anyone to build upon it evidently demonstrates the paradigm shift happening in the digital health space.
The Indian Presidency has offered to share population-scale digital public goods and Digital public infrastructure as part of the India Stack which is a step moving towards digital global commons.
In the race to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, high quality, vetted, open-source software and content must be available and adaptable to governments. In the United Nations Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, one of the eight key areas for action is promoting digital public goods (DPGs) to create a more equitable world.
Digital Public Goods have the potential to address critical needs of low and middle income countries if they are sustainably managed, and governments in these countries have the information, motivation, funding and capacity to effectively incubate and implement DPGs
Digital Square at PATH is a global initiative that shares this vision as it applies to health. Since 2016, Digital Square has focused on reorienting the global digital health community to better match digital health approaches to country needs—advancing interoperable digital health tools that are adaptable to different countries and contexts to help close the health equity gap.
The discussions around a Global Initiative on Digital Health, democratisation of technology and the commitment shown in this week are very exciting. A collaborative ‘One Health’ digital agenda for policy, strategy, governance, financing, and solutions to achieve Universal Health Coverage and equity is the way forward and at PATH and Digital Square we are completely aligned to contribute our bit.