The Digital Health Ecosystem (DHE) project supports the sustainability and expansion of digital tools for health by helping local entrepreneurs more easily access financing, technical resources, and opportunities for scale. The DHE, in particular, will foster a global network of innovators building businesses on common open-source platforms, enabling them to focus on unmet needs while leveraging existing digital architectures and communities in countries. By doing so, innovators will face fewer barriers in scaling businesses that support health systems and expand country choice by offering local as well as global solutions.

For more background information, please visit the article on this work.

Call for Expressions of Interest

In July 2022, the Bayer-funded and PATH and Medic-led DHE released a Call for Expressions of Interest: Africa-based Digital Health Entrepreneurs to Expand Tools for Community Health. In support of this effort, Digital Square invited African businesses, organizations, and social entrepreneurs with software, content, and/or services to participate. The objective was to create a continent-wide list of qualifying respondents that could be available to donors, investors, and implementing partners worldwide.

In their submissions, candidates had to demonstrate their ability to support the implementation of software tools and products. They also had to have an interest in engaging in the digital health space of a country, and a willingness to work with local governments and populations at scale, including populations that cannot directly purchase from vendors, but may be government beneficiaries. Finally, they had to be registered as a formal organization or business in the World Health Organization Africa Region, with sufficient accounting mechanisms to track revenue and expenditures.

The EOI received a total of 175 submissions from 25 African countries. The six countries with the most submissions were Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

The submissions presented a wide array of offerings on topics such as telehealth, electronic medical records, supply chain systems, patient scheduling, and data use. More than half of the technologies have been on the market for 3 or more years. Of those, more than half have been available for 5 or more years, and a notable number have been available for at least 10 years, representing a healthy mix of market maturity.

Evaluation of submissions

All submissions were evaluated by a steering committee comprised of a diverse set of the foremost leaders and thinkers in digital health technology, including representatives from country governments, donor organizations, implementing organizations, technology vendors, and other groups.

After completing the evaluations, the DHE team applied a scoring system with a 3-point scale based on the LESC’s evaluations. The DHE team then eliminated low scorers (1–1.5), included high scorers (2.5–3), and reevaluated mid-level scorers (1.6–2.4). The team also reevaluated any one organization where the two reviewers had more than a 0.5 differentiation in overall score. The LESC members then met with the DHE and Digital Square teams to discuss the outcomes and finalize the Africa-based Digital Health Entrepreneurs List, which consists of 112 of the 175 submissions received.

The LESC evaluated submissions using formal, documented evaluation criteria available in Table 1 below.

How to use this list

This list is intended to be a resource to help countries, donors, implementers, and the global digital health community identify possible local partners to leverage and adapt existing digital tools in response to improve health system challenges. It is intended to start conversations on potential partnerships with local, Africa-based entrepreneurs.

Please note this list was curated in August 2022, and does NOT fully vet the technical quality or experience of the solutions and does not constitute an endorsement of the solutions listed.

Users can download the list below. From there, users can filter their copy of the list by technological need, geographical need, or both.

If you would like to provide feedback on the value of this list, please complete this form. We are also proactively following up with entrepreneurs on the list to assess what type of engagement resulted from this resource and how we can structure future public calls.