South Africa has the highest number of people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the world and the highest number of people enrolled in antiretroviral (ART) therapy. While significant progress has been made since ART was introduced in 2004, there is a need to reduce new infections further and to increase ART initiation and retention.

Digital health interventions can strengthen the health system, but success relies on an effective digital health ecosystem.

The Gates Foundation tasked Digital Square with conducting an HIV digital health landscape assessment in South Africa’s two most populous provinces to understand the prevalence and barriers to treatment of HIV. Digital Square also investigated how the digital health ecosystem is affecting progress toward local HIV targets and the Sustainable Development Goals in the public health sector.

The report, Digital Health to Support HIV Care: A landscape assessment of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces in South Africa (2022), provides an overview of HIV and its associated digital health ecosystem. Promising practices, gaps, challenges, and recommendations identified through the assessment can assist provincial health leaders, donors, and other partners with strengthening the digital health ecosystem in the public health sector to support HIV and other health programs.

In addition to the list of systems, tools, and applications described in the report, the table, Digital health systems, applications and tools identified by the Map & Match and Vital Wave projects, can assist with future landscape assessments.

The Provincial Data Governance Framework, developed during the project, can support provinces in implementing and ultimately complying with the Draft National Data and Cloud Policy.